FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS   
BONE MARROW DONOR REGISTRATION

• Who needs a bone marrow transplant?
• Patients who have blood-related disease, including leukemia and aplastic anemia, often need a bone marrow transplant because it is their only hope for life. They need to find a match, but only 30% find a match within their family, no matter how many siblings they have.

• Why should I register as a bone marrow donor?
• It is extremely difficult to find an exact match for patients who need a bone marrow transplant. There are hundreds of thousands of possible combinations for the HLA antigens which we all carry in our blood and marrow. Finding a suitable donor is like trying to find two matching combination padlocks in a bin with a few million padlocks.

• Why should people of all ethnic backgrounds and combinations of ethnicity  register as bone marrow donors?
• Bone marrow is tissue, and we inherit tissue type from our ancestors. Chances are that a donor will be someone of the same heritage as the patient. People of all ethnicities die every year for lack of a bone marrow donor. (I can provide pictures of people of all different races and backgrounds who have had trouble finding a donor.) A recent article in the Rocky Mountain News tells about Jim Jackson, who is black and a leukemia/lymphoma patient in Denver and has no match in the 11+ million people registered as donors. This is a very real problem!

• What do I have to do to register?
• Just come out to the Day of Giving and register with the Colorado Marrow Donor Program, which will send your registration to the National Marrow Donor Program. All it takes is answering some general health questions and doing four cheek swabs. The registration is free at the Day of Giving and should take only a few minutes.

• Who can register as a bone marrow donor?
• Anyone between 18 and 60 years old and in general good health can register. See the information booklet or all the Colorado Marrow Donor Program at 1-800-619-1099 with further eligibility questions.
  

• How does a person donate bone marrow?
• The doctor decides between two procedures: One involves using marrow donation, in which the donor receives anesthesia and doctors use needles to withdraw liquid marrow from the back of the pelvic bone. This is an out-patient procedure.
  
• The other is a non-surgical outpatient procedure and involves collecting circulating stem cells by taking shots for five days before donation (to increase the number of blood forming cells in the blood stream), then collecting the cells through a filtering of the blood as it is removed from the vein of one arm, goes through a machine that separates out the blood-forming cells, and then is put back into the other arm.

In either case, the body replaces the bone marrow within a few weeks.

• 6,000 patients each year die waiting to find a bone marrow donor.
  
• We have a little girl in town who will probably need a bone marrow transplant and a community leader in Denver who needs a transplant now and has no match.
  
• It is very difficult to find a match. Most donors are of the same ethnic background as the patient because bone marrow is tissue and we inherit our tissue type from our ancestors.
  
• Registrants do four cheek swabs and answer a general health questionnaire.
  
• Registrants need to bring an ID and the name and address of two people who will always know how to contact them.
  

Click here for, Bone Marrow Donor Health Guidelines

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