Joining the Bone Marrow Donor Registry
It is very simple to join the registry. Anyone between the ages of 18 and 60 and in good health can join. Simply complete a consent form and brief health history. The National Bone Marrow Program Representative will then check your health history to see if you are a suitable candidate.
The NMDP (National Marrow Donor Program) is now phasing in buccal swabs for sample collection at donor recruitment. In some cases,if you are donating a unit of blood, one additional tube of blood may be drawn from your arm. In both of these cases, the blood or tissue cells will be HLA typed and put into an international database that is searched daily by physicians who request searches for their patients needing a bone marrow transplant. If you are selected as a donor, the National Marrow Donor Program will notify you and ask you to come in for blood work. From this, a determination is made on whether you are eligible to donate marrow. You stay on the registry as a potential donor until you reach age 61. If you are a match to someone on the registry, you are asked to attend an information session. There is no charge if you are selected as a donor. The recipient's insurance picks up the charges. One of the ways bone marrow is collected is for the donor to enter the hospital and have marrow collected from the back of their hipbone under general anesthesia. Bone is not removed, just bone marrow. The marrow replaces itself within 4-6 weeks. Another type of collection is called Peripheral Blood Stem Cell (PBSC). The PBSC process is the most often used. Our bodies make small number of PBSCs. The donor would receive a medication that to increase the amount of PBSC and after several days the donor would have the cells collected by taking blood from one's arm, sending it through sterile tubing to an enclosed sterile packet, collecting the PBSCs and returning the donor's cells to the other arm. There is a $ 35 charge per person for becoming registered. If this cost is prohibitive, please let Susan Mobley, our parish nurse, know. You may reach her at 704-295-4836/ smobley@mpumc.org.
