What do hospitals do with blood cords?

Question

as in are they just tossed out or are some donated for scientific study or just donated in general to a blood cord bank

Answer 1

pls see this link 4 ur answers:

http://parentsguidecordblood.org/content...

Birth is a one-time opportunity to help society by donating your child's cord blood to a public bank.  Cord blood contains stem cells that can save lives.  Patients requiring a stem cell transplant will receive cells from one of three sources: bone marrow, circulating blood, or umbilical cord blood.  The first two exist in all healthy adults, but cord blood can only be harvested and stored at birth.  The section on cord blood transplants explains that it is easier to match transplant patients with cord blood than with the two sources of adult blood.  Hence, establishing public banks of cord blood from donors with diverse tissue types can save many lives.  

Birth is also a one-time opportunity to help your own family by saving your child's cord blood.  Transplant patients recover better when they receive stem cells from a related donor, instead of an unrelated donor.  In the future, if there are regenerative medicine advances which can repair the body with the patient's own stem cells, then children whose parents saved their cord blood will have better access to those treatments.

Answer 2

All of the above. Some parents opt to save in a special bank the umbilical cord because they can use the tissue later on in their child's life. Some are donated to science for study adn tissue or blood samples and the rest of discarded with other medical waste. After that, its anybody's guess I'm afraid.

Answer 3

You can have them stored incase your child or family member develops leukemia. The blood in the cord is a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant for your baby and possibly a match for a family member. If you choose not to keep it you can donate it.