Bone Marrow Transplant For Children with Cancer

When does a child need a bone marrow transplant?
Bone marrow transplants (BMT) are often required for children with cancer, such as leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, tumors and other childhood cancers.

Why is Children's Mercy the best children's hospital for bone marrow transplant?
Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City is one of the leading children's hospitals in the Midwest. The bone marrow transplant center offers a highly skilled team of pediatric blood and marrow transplant specialists including Board certified pediatric hematologists, pediatric oncologists and surgeons. More than 60 patients have received bone marrow transplants at Children's Mercy in the last 3 years, with high survival rates that are comparable to the best published results.

What are common childhood cancer diagnoses requiring pediatric bone marrow transplant?
Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplantation services are for children with a variety of childhood cancers, including:

• Leukemia & lymphoma - acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, chronic myelocytic leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
• Aplastic anemia - congenital hypoplastic anemia, failure of the bone marrow to produce blood cells, including red and white blood cells and platelets
• Solid childhood tumors - neuroblastoma, sarcomas, brain tumors
• Inherited disorders - immunodeficiencies, Fanconci pancytopenia syndrome, Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, storage diseases and hemoglobinopathies

What pediatric bone marrow transplant services does Children's Mercy offer?
Children's Mercy is one of the few centers across the country that can provide mismatched bone marrow transplants for family members, as well as matched unrelated donor transplants via an international marrow search. Children's Mercy is also a leader in the use of mini-transplants using the donor's immune system to reduce the amount of chemotherapy needed for the transplant.

What are the different types of bone marrow transplants for children?
As one of the Midwest's leading pediatric bone marrow transplantation centers for children, we offer three types of BMT:

• Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplant - when marrow from an unrelated adult or pediatric donor is used
• Synergeneic Bone Marrow Transplant - when marrow from an identical twin is used
  
• Autologous Bone Marrow Transplant - when the pediatric patient's own marrow is used

Additional pediatric bone marrow transplant services include:

• T-cell depleted transplants - T-cells sometimes -- when transplanted to a patient -- attack tissues and can cause graft versus host disease (GvHD). To minimize the chances that a patient will develop GvHD, specialists can modify the transplant before infusion by removing the T-cells.
• Mini-transplants - non-myeloablative transplants do not completely destroy the patient's diseased marrow. In this transplantation procedure, pediatric patients receive lower doses of chemotherapy drugs.
• High-dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell rescue - high dose chemotherapy is used during a conditioning period to kill the tumor. Bone marrow function is then restored by infusing the pediatric patient's own previously-stored bone marrow cells.

For more information on pediatric bone marrow transplant, see Bone Marrow Transplant Consortium and Children's Mercy Care Cards.

Diagnoses

• Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL)
• Acute Myelogenic Leukemia (AML)
• Brain tumors
• Ewing's Family of Sarcomas
• Liver Tumors
• Hodgkin's Disease
• Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
• Neuroblastomas
• Wilms' Tumor
• Osteosarcoma
• Retinoblastoma
• Rhabdomyosarcoma
• Other Childhood Cancers

Sickle Cell Disease
Hematologic Disorders

Physicians

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Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics is the Kansas City region's exclusive pediatric medical center and health care network. Our physicians, nurses and technicians are all trained specifically to work with children. We provide the finest care possible in the following pediatric subspecialties: Adolescent Medicine; Allergy/Asthma/Immunology; Anesthesiology; Bone Marrow Transplant; Burn/Trauma Care; Cardiology; Cardiovascular Surgery; Cleft Palate/Craniofacial; Comprehensive Sleep Disorders Center; Critical Care Medicine; Dentistry; Dermatology; Developmental and Behavioral Sciences; Ear, Nose and Throat (Otorhinolaryngology); Emergency Medicine; Endocrinology/Diabetes; Gastroenterology; General Pediatrics; General/Thoracic/Urologic Surgery; Genetics; Gynecological Surgery; Hearing and Speech; Liver Transplant; Hematology/Oncology; Hospitalists; Infectious Disease; Medical Research; Medical Toxicology; Minimally Invasive Surgery; Neonatology; Nephrology: Kidney Transplant; Neurology; Neurosurgery; Nursing; Occupational Therapy; Home Care; Ophthalmology; Orthopaedic Surgery; Pathology/Laboratory Medicine; Pharmacology; Physical Therapy; Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery; Pulmonology; Radiology; Rehabilitation Medicine; Respiratory Care; Rheumatology; Transport; Click here for additional information.