![]() ![]() Antibiotics and other drugs are commonly prescribed to help prevent or treat infections during this time, and you are likely to need platelet transfusions to reduce your risk of bleeding. During this time you will be more at risk of infections (due to the lack of infection-fighting white blood cells) and bleeding (due to a lack of platelets). In the week following the transplant, your blood counts drop dramatically. From here the stem cells make their way to your bone marrow where they become re-established and start making new blood cells. After you have finished this treatment, your stem cells are thawed and reinfused through a vein into your bloodstream. Conditioning therapy is used to help destroy any leftover cancer cells in your body and to make or create a space in your bone marrow for the new stem cells to grow. In the week leading up to your transplant you will be given a few days of very high-dose chemotherapy, and sometimes radiotherapy, to destroy your underlying disease. The apheresis machine draws blood from the body, spins the blood very quickly, collects the part that contains the blood stem cells, and returns the rest of the blood back to the body. Stem cells are collected from your bloodstream by passing all your blood through a special machine called a cell separator (or apheresis machine). It is important to keep taking your injections of growth factors at the same time every day until you are told to stop. Regular blood tests will be taken over the following week to identify the best day to start collecting your stem cells. Growth factor injections are usually given for several days, usually starting 24 hours after the completion of your chemotherapy. G-CSF promotes the production of stem cells in the bone marrow which then leak out into your normal blood circulation in your veins. This process is called stem cell mobilisation and usually involves the use of chemotherapy in combination with colony stimulating growth factor injections – usually G-CSF. Stem cells normally live in the bone marrow, but they can be encouraged to move out of the bone marrow and into the bloodstream. It is more common these days to collect bone marrow stem cells from the bloodstream. In autologous stem cell transplantation, stem cells are collected (or “harvested”) from either the bone marrow, bloodstream (called a peripheral blood stem cell harvest), or sometimes a combination of both. Stem cells are usually collected when the patient’s disease is in remission or their disease is in a more stable state.
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