Extract

Introduction

After several decades of clinical experimentation, bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has become common practice in the treatment of hematological malignancies and some disseminated solid tumors. Basically, the graft provides hemopoietic recovery from an otherwise fatal dose of cytotoxic agents administered to provide maximal eradication of malignant cells. Allogeneic BMT is largely limited to the treatment of leukemias. It is also successfully employed to treat patients with aplastic anemia, severe combined immune deficiency, and certain rare metabolic diseases. Autologous bone marrow grafts have become an increasingly important option in the treatment of lymphomas and mammary cancer and are used in leukemic patients for whom a matched allogeneic donor cannot be found. Since mobilized stem cells can be harvested from the peripheral blood by leukapheresis, autologous bone marrow grafts are rapidly being replaced by grafts of autologous peripheral blood stem cells. In this review, the terms “stem cells” and “BMT” will be used for both bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell grafts.

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