Bone Marrow Transplant Center

Bone Marrow Transplant Center

Our hospital serves our patients with the Bone Marrow Transplant Center. In our unit, which is suitable for today's technology, bone marrow transplantation treatments of patients from Turkey and abroad are applied under the supervision of our experienced doctors and team. As a university hospital, a multidisciplinary approach is offered with the support of all branches in the follow-up of treatment processes.

Bone marrow transplantation is a successful treatment option in today's medicine for many benign and malignant hematologic and some oncologic diseases.

Bone Marrow Transplant Types

In bone marrow transplantation, blood stem cells collected from your own body (autologous transplantation) or blood stem cells collected from a healthy donor (allogeneic transplantation) can be used.

Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation

In this type of transplant, stem cells from a healthy donor are used to replace stem cells in the bone marrow that cannot produce enough healthy blood cells. It may also be called allogeneic stem cell transplantation or allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.

How to Find a Donor?

• First of all, healthy siblings born to the same parents are the first choice for tissue matching.
• Compatible donors can also be found in 1st degree relatives other than siblings.
• If a tissue-matched donor cannot be found within the family, a tissue-matched volunteer donor can be found by screening bone marrow donor banks, also called unrelated donor banks.
• In selected patients, if a tissue-matched donor cannot be found, half-matched stem cells from siblings or parents can also be used.

How Are Stem Cells Harvested?

• With an apheresis device, the donor's blood stem cells can be collected from the donor's blood via a vein or catheter with the help of some special treatments.
• In some patient- and donor-specific cases, blood stem cells can also be collected from the donor's bone marrow in the hip bone under operating room conditions.
• Stem cells from the umbilical cord can be used in pediatric patients.

What is the Treatment Process?

The patient is hosted in a room in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit with special hygiene conditions and special equipment. Before allogeneic stem cell transplantation, the patient receives high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy to destroy diseased cells and prepare the body for donor-derived stem cells. The donor-derived stem cells are infused into the patient through a catheter into the vein according to a pre-prepared plan. No surgical procedure is required during the procedure. The patient is kept under observation during inpatient follow-up and treatment for an average of 4-6 weeks in order for the stem cells to adapt to the patient and produce blood. During this period, you will be given treatments and blood products specific to your disease.

In Which Diseases Is It Performed?

• Acute leukemias (Acute myeloid leukemia-AML / Acute lymphoblastic leukemia-ALL)
• Aplastic anemia
• Myelodysplastic syndrome-MDS
• Chronic leukemias (Chronic myeloid leukemia-CML / Chronic lymphocytic leukemia-CLL)
• Lymphomas (recurrent Hodgkin lymphoma / recurrent non-Hodgkin lymphomas)
• Hemoglobinopathies

Autologous Stem Cell Transplant

This type of transplant uses stem cells taken from the patient's own blood cells. It can also be called autologous stem cell transplantation or autologous bone marrow transplantation.

How Are Stem Cells Harvested?

• With the apheresis device, the patient's blood stem cells can be collected intravenously, usually with the help of a catheter, with some special treatments applied.
• In rare but special cases, blood stem cells can also be collected from the bone marrow in the patient's hip bone under operating room conditions.
• The collected stem cells are frozen and stored in special cooling tanks until the treatment process.

What is the Treatment Process?

The patient is hosted in a room in the bone marrow transplant unit with special hygiene conditions and special equipment. Before autologous stem cell transplantation, the patient receives high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy to destroy diseased cells and prepare the body for new stem cells. The frozen stem cells are thawed according to a pre-prepared plan and infused into the patient's vein through a catheter. No surgical procedure is required during transplantation. In order for the stem cells to produce blood, the patient is kept under observation as an inpatient for an average of 3-5 weeks during the treatment process. During this period, you will be given treatments and blood products specific to your disease.