BMT General Protocol

Requirements for Transplant Candidates at the Temple BMT Program

Please have a referring doctor forward updated records, including: a complete history and physical records; records of initial and recent bone marrow biopsies and pathologic data; initial and recent imaging reports; and pertinent labs.

After the initial visit and prior to any therapy, patients must sign a written informed consent and attend a two-to-three hour education session with a BMT physician.  This will be discussed with you at your initial visit.

  • Pre-transplant testing includes infectious disease blood tests, complete pulmonary function tests, cardiac scan for left and right ventricular ejection fraction, liver and renal function blood tests and confirmatory HLA tissue typing and blood typing. Imaging studies and bone marrow tests are performed as indicated.
  • Related allogeneic recipients must have HLA-A,B,DR matched sibling or family related donors. Cross-reactive mismatches at a single A or B locus may be acceptable. All matches are confirmed by molecular typing.
  • Unrelated allogeneic recipients must also be identical by molecular at 10 DNA loci, especially at the DRB1 locus. The closest molecular match available at all other loci is chosen.  Our program will transplant 9/10 and 10/10 matched unrelated donors.
  • Haploidentical allogeneic recipients must share half of their 10 DNA loci with the donor.  This type of transplant is under invetigation in our program.

General Criteria for a Transplant at the Temple BMT Program

In general, the patient must meet the following criteria to be eligible at the Temple BMT program:

  • Good performance status (ECOG 01 or KPS > 80%)
  • No serious neurologic or psychiatric condition
  • Serum creatinine 1.8 mg/dl or creatinine clearance > 60cc/minute
  • Cardiac left ventricular ejection fraction, by cardiac MUGA scan > 45%
  • Pulmonary diffusion capabity (DLCO) and an FEV1 on pulmonary function testing must be > 50%
  • Bilirubin < 2 mg/dl, AST and ALT < 2x upper limit of normal and stable
  • Patients must be HIV negative and have no active infections
  • Patients must be willing to sign informed consents and cooperate with extensive follow-up examinations
  • Patients must have evidence of source of financial support (insurance) for the transplant
  • All candidates undergo rigorous pretransplant candidate review by BMT physicians and social workers

For more information, please call the Temple Bone Marrrow Transplant Program at 215-214-3122.

TOP