Cord Blood Collection Services in Brooklyn

Reconstitution of the bone marrow is an important and potentially curative treatment option for a wide variety of malignant and nonmalignant diseases, including acute and chronic leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia major, and a number of other genetic and acquired disorders. The stem cells required for this procedure are usually obtained from the bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood of an allogeneic (non-self) related or unrelated donor. In some situations where extensive myeloablative chemotherapy is required to treat a malignancy not involving the bone marrow, autologous (self) stem cells may be used. During their pregnancies, many expectant parents become aware of the possibility of banking their infant’s cord blood for potential future use. They are encouraged to call upon their health care providers to help them decide whether or not to donate their infant’s cord blood, or to pay to preserve it for private use.

Protocols for umbilical cord blood collection are designed to avoid interfering with the delivery of the baby, while still preserving the sterility and maximizing the volume, and thus the number of hematopoietic stem cells collected in the cord blood unit. Importantly, cord blood collection should never compromise the safety of the mother or infant during childbirth. Standard obstetric procedures for determining the mode of delivery and timing of cord clamping should not be altered in an attempt to optimize cord blood collection. Delayed cord clamping improves infant iron stores, but compromises the size and cell dose of collected cord blood units. As such, delayed cord clamping is usually avoided in term infants when collection of cord blood is planned.