Global Hospitals successfully performs Haplo Identical Stem Cells Transplant

This procedure saves the life of an eight years old suffering from Acute Leukemia

Global Hospitals, successfully performs haplo identical stem cells transplant on an eight years old child suffering from acute leukemia. The child, Upendra (name changed) was running out of time and had to urgently undergo transplantation due to relapse of his acute leukemia. Haplo (half matched) transplant was the only option in which the father proved to be the best haplo donor. After understanding the possible risk factors, the team of experts at Global Hospitals performed the pre-tests required for the transplant. The patient was admitted in a special HEPA filtered transplant rooms and received very high dose of chemotherapy to destroy his diseased bone marrow. The father (donor) received few injections before the stem cells were removed by apheresis (filtering) procedure. Thereafter,Upendra was infused with these stem cells on the transplant day.

After the transplant, Upendra’s the WBC counts plunged to below 100 for many days and the infections were controlled by using higher antibiotics. He was provided extensive support with blood transfusions, nutrients along with pain killers to keep his pain under control.

Dr Niranjan Rathod, Head of Dept, Hematology & BMT,  Global Hospitals, said, “I am happy to see the recovery of the child and also the fact that we could offer him a new type of high risk involving haplo transplant in Mumbai which almost costs similar to that of allogeneic transplant. I owe credit to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, USA where I was trained in this type of transplant under able guidance of Dr Prof O’Donnell. Although, there is a high risk involved in this procedure, these transplants offer a great option to the patients in urgent need for transplants. We wish to continue offering many such emergency services to our patients, saving their lives.”

Manpreet Sohal, Regional CEO, Global Hospitals, said, “Our focus has always been quality patient care; and through successful surgeries such as this, we aim to raise the benchmark even higher in the field of specialised tertiary medical care. We ensure that with our large team of specialists supported by world class infrastructure and technologies we are able to deliver exceptional service to save the lives of our patients.”

Unfortunately, a lot of patients who require bone marrow (stem cells) transplant usually do not have a completely HLA matched donor, as there are only 25 per cent of chances that one finds a sibling matched donor. Unrelated donor transplant are not only prohibitively expensive but also take long time which these patients don’t have. HLA, in simpler terms, is our genetic identity which we inherit from both parents as haplotype (half from each parents) and pass on to our children as haplo. So one has much higher probability of finding haplo (half) matched donor in family, expanding transplant possibilities.