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How does it work? of Bone marrow transplant

Your doctor will decide if you are able to have a bone marrow harvest (autologous transplant) and this will depend on what type of disease you have, how advanced it is and whether it has affected your bone marrow. If you are not able to have an autologous transplant, the doctors will try to find a bone marrow donor for an allogenic transplant.

If you require a bone marrow transplant a compatible donor will need to be found. This person might come from your immediate family, usually a brother or sister, or it may be someone from the national bone marrow register (see bone marrow donation).

A transplant will only be successful if your tissue type and the tissue type of the donor are a very close match. In order to match up a donor and patient, both tissue types must be tested to see if they are compatible.

It can be difficult to find a suitable donor on the bone marrow register even though there are thousands of donors on the register. This is because there are a great number of tissue types and a very close match has to be made. Only one in four patients find a suitable donor. This is why it is important that more people join the register.

Tissue type:

Tissue type (also known as HLA type or human leucocyte antigens type) helps the body fight infection. In order to check that the tissue type is compatibile, doctors check how many proteins on the surface of the blood cells match. There are millions of different tissue types but some are more common than others.

Tissue type is inherited; we get three antigens from each parent. This means it is more likely that a relative will have a matching tissue type. About 30% of donors are found from the patient's immediate family. The transplant is also more likely to be successful if your ethnic backgrounds match.

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