Word: corde
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...Cord blood has several advantages over bone marrow transplants, the procedure to which it is most often compared. The first is that cord blood is collected without risk to the mother or the newborn, whereas a bone marrow donor faces surgery and general anesthesia. Cord-blood transplants also require a less perfect match in unrelated people, opening up a broader spectrum of potential donors, and recipients' bodies are less likely to reject a transplant...
...decision to donate a newborn's umbilical-cord blood is, for many expectant mothers, a simple checkmark on a long list of prenatal choices. But for Noel Beninati, one donor's checkmark offered a lifeline. Last May, Beninati received a transplant of stem cells harvested from the blood of an infant's discarded umbilical cord at Boston's Dana Farber Institute, to help him fight a rare blood condition called myelodysplastic syndrome. After doctors couldn't find a matching bone-marrow donor, the 58-year-old New Yorker says his last hope was cord blood, a solution that would...
...State legislators agree. More and more have introduced or passed laws to mandate that doctors and hospitals educate expectant parents about the possibility of cord-blood donation. Doctors can now treat some 70 diseases using stem cells harvested from cord blood, and states including Oklahoma, Michigan and Arkansas are considering bills to fund the establishment of additional local public cord-blood banks and collection centers. "Ideally, we want people to see this as a public service akin to blood or organ donation," says Oklahoma state senator Jay Paul Gumm, who has sponsored such legislation. "Something that they automatically think...
...Despite the claim by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) that more than 10,000 new patients each year could benefit from cord-blood stem-cell transplants, most umbilical cords currently end up as medical waste. Today, a matching donor from the national registry is found only about 25% of the time, and many patients die waiting. So far, doctors have found the most promise in cord blood for conditions such as blood cancers, leukemia and sickle-cell anemia. But last year, an ongoing study at the University of Florida showed cord-blood cells could also be effective at treating...
...currently only has about 70,000 units of cord blood stored at its 20 public cord-blood banks. That's largely because few parents are aware that public donation is even a possibility. Instead, if a mother-to-be has heard of cord-blood banking at all, she's considered private banking, or the storage of her infant's own cord blood, an option costing up to $3,000 plus annual fees. Parents generally see private banking as an insurance policy should their child or a sibling fall ill later in life. Public donation does not guarantee availability...