Bone Marrow Transplant

My grandson needs to have a bone laterite transplant and how to find out whether or not we have matches within the family

[Hien K Duong, MD]

Hi Kimmie_Girl13,

Either an inner cheek swab or a blood sample will be requested from siblings and occasionally from parents.  

We start off with checking whether a sibling is a possible match. Each sibling has 25% chance of being a perfect match. If your grandson has more than one sibling, the chance that he will have a sibling match is higher.  

There is less than 5% chance that a parent would be a perfect match. We do not check extended family members .

If there are family members that are perfect matches, we then search for unrelated donor or umbilical cord blood units that may be a source of stem cells..

If no sibling donor, unrelated donor, or umbilical cord blood unit match can be found, at some institutions, a "haploidentical" transplant can be performed in which case a parent ("half-matched") is the donor.