EFN

German studies have concluded and reported on Monday that Leukemia patients who have stem-cell transplants survive just as long as those who have the more aggressive procedure, a bone marrow transplant.

A bone marrow transplant procedure involves the removal of stem cells out of the bone marrow, a very intricate procedure where the patient must undergo surgery with the use of general anesthesia. The stem-cell transplant procedure involves the removal of stem cells from the blood. This procedure avoids some complications that are sometimes seen with the bone marrow collection.

At the Charite Medicine University, researchers have studied the survival rates of 329 patients from 42 different transplant centers within 13 European countries, Australia and Israel. All patients had undergone either a bone marrow or stem-cell transplant. It was concluded that the survival rates 10 years after the procedure were similar; 56.5 for the recipients of the bone marrow transplant and 49.1 for those recipients of the stem-cell procedure.

It was also found that patients with severe types of blood cancer seem to do better when having the bone marrow transplant rather than the stem-cell transplants. Scientists suggest that there are greater long-term benefits to having the more complex treatment.