Bone marrow transplantation for patients with Mediterranean anemia (thalassemia)
Mediterranean anemia (thalassemia) is one of the most important and dangerous hereditary blood diseases spread in our country.
The patient needs to take blood on a monthly and regular basis since the first year of life, which results in iron deposits that affect the vital functions of the body if the appropriate treatment is not taken for the accumulation of iron, which in itself is another suffering.
Despite the emergence of drugs administered orally instead of a subcutaneous pump, it is not considered an effective treatment that compensates for regular blood taking and other complications.
Bone marrow transplant
Bone marrow transplantation from a healthy donor is the only curative treatment, God willing, and bone marrow operations began in 1981 in the United States and Italy, and over time, technologies and medical care developed and their results became encouraging and achieved steady successes.
There are conditions that help the success of the operation and reduce the failure rates, such as the presence of a matching donor and conducting the operation at an early age to avoid the negative effects of frequent blood giving, the most important of which is the accumulation of iron stored in the blood and the occurrence of disorders in vital organs in the body such as the heart and liver.
In keeping with the medical progress in this field, bone marrow transplantation for Thalassemia patients has become among the diseases that are transplanted to them, such as intractable cancers, immunodeficiency diseases, metabolic disorders, as well as diseases of bone marrow failure.
King Faisal Specialist Hospital’s experience in bone marrow transplantation for thalassemia patients:
(62) transplants were performed from 1998 AD to 2006 AD, and they included children with thalassemia with various degrees of disease from simple to advanced stages of the disease. The marrow transfusion was from identical healthy sibling donors.
Planting procedures
After careful studies of the patient and the donor, the patients were admitted to the isolation unit and medical treatments were performed, including chemotherapy, to get rid of the diseased bone marrow and then transfer the normal marrow after it was taken from the donor under general anesthesia. The patient stays for a period of (3) - (4) weeks, and then is discharged from the hospital to be followed up on a regular basis in the bone marrow transplant clinic.
Cultivation results
After transplantation, patients have been followed up since 1998 on an ongoing basis, and 92% of them are still being followed up in hospital.
Of those who have been transplanted
77% of the operation was completely successful and cured the thalassemia disease and they became normal without the need to take blood or any other medicine, and they did not have any complications such as rejecting the marrow, returning the disease again, or attacking the body from the new bone marrow.
Thus, the experience of King Faisal Specialist Hospital in the ranks of the largest global marrow transplant centers in Europe and America, especially if we know that the largest centers in Italy published about (824) patients who underwent the operation and the success rate was 75%.
As a result of the good results achieved by King Faisal Specialist Hospital, the hospital has participated in international conferences, and the Saudi experience of bone marrow transplantation was chosen to be offered in the World Federation of Thalassemia Conference in 2006.
The study of King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Bone Marrow Transplantation was presented at the most important international conferences in the United States and Europe, and was nominated for the European Conference on Marrow Transplantation in 2007.
Dr. Abdullah bin Hussein Al-Jafri
Consultant and head of the pediatric hematology department
At King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh
