Posted at: 08/26/2009 7:27 PM
By: Axel Gumbel

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Medical Minute: Bone Marrow Transplant

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Over the last decade, medicine has seen great advances in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Many people with the disease are living longer and many are cured.

All this progress is thanks to cancer research and people who are willing to make sacrifices, sacrifices such as donating bone marrow.

Amy brooks first made them to battle the effects of chemotherapy and radiation.

"Your skin really takes a beating," says Amy Brooks.

The treatment was harsh, but it did seem to deliver the knockout blow to her Leukemia.

Then about a year later doctors told Amy the cancer came back.

Amy needed a bone marrow transplant.

"The term bone marrow transplant always brings up the image of someone going into an OR and having bone marrow put in.  But it's not that. It’s actually more like a blood transfusion," says Mayo Clinic Dr. Dennis Gastineau.

Dr. Dennis Gastineau says bone marrow is the spongy tissue inside some bones.

Its job is to produce blood cells.

To prepare for the transplant, patients have chemotherapy to kill the leukemia and malfunctioning marrow.

Then transplanted blood stem cells are put into the blood stream, and ideally the transplanted cells begin producing new, healthy cells.

The cells used for transplantation come from one of three sources:

Healthy people can donate marrow from their hipbone, which requires a surgical procedure - or they can donate blood stem cells.

Last, if patients can't find a matching donor, they can be transplanted with stem cells from their own blood.

It works if they're healthy enough to go through the collection process before their marrow is wiped out from chemotherapy.

This is what Amy did.

In a process called Aphersis, a machine removes only stem cells from the blood.

What remains goes back in the donor's arm.

Amy's transplanted stem cells worked.

Now, eleven years after her bone marrow transplant, Amy’s not focused on leukemia, she's focused on her customers.

Every year many people can't have bone marrow transplants because they can't find a match or they can't use their own stem cells.

There is a need for donations.