Cord blood banking?

Question

my best friend passed away a few months ago from a rare cancer. Long story short his mother had a baby about 3 years ago and saved her cord blood and when he had his stem cell transplant they used that,well my question is what are the odds of this happening and should i envest the money into saving my baby's cord blood?

Answer 1

You're better safe than sorry.... odds are probably fairly slim. However, my husband lost his best friend from a form of Leukemia and has decided to keep our baby's cord blood so he knows that he has done everything in his power if that situation were to occur with our child. I'm sorry to hear about your friend, and I wish you the best of luck! God Bless!

Answer 2

It depends...do you have the money to spend on banked cord blood? Remember that if you don't need it right away, you'll be paying the banking fee for as long as you decide to keep the blood.  The odds are very slim.....even if your baby does need his own cord blood, there is also a 50% chance that it won't work to cure the cancer....sometimes the stem cells in the blood are just not enough.

There are PUBLIC blood banks however. You don't have a monthly storage fee, you just have to go through a process to find a match should your child need one.  You can always consider donating his cord blood to a public bank (depends on if your hospital does that though.)

Answer 3

Privatly banking cord blood is very expensive.  If you can afford it, it may be worth it, may not.  Its kind of like an insurance policy, its there in case you need it, but you may not.

Also remember that there are public banks.  My stem cell transplant used cord blood from the public bank.  The public bank is free to donate to.  If something happened, you wouldnt be able to get your childs unit back (it likely would have already been used, and donation is anonymous), but you would be able to get another unit if it matched.

I dont really know which companies are best for private banking, but if you want to donate to the public bank, you need to contact your countries marrow program.  In the US, it is the National Marrow Donors Program and the website is http://www.marrow.org and the page about cord blood donation is http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Cord_B...

If you are in a different country, just search for your countries marrow program, or shoot me an email and I can help you find it.