Cancer Center
to host event for blood and marrow donor registry
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana
– Every three minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer and most require
a marrow transplant to survive.
That’s why Franciscan
St. Francis Cancer Center, in coordination with the Indiana Blood Center and Be The Match® Registry, is holding a drive to enlist potential donors. The event will
be Thursday, July 28 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Franciscan St. Francis
Health-Indianapolis in the Terrace Café. It will continue and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
in the Cancer Center lobby.
To be considered for
the registry, donors must be between the ages of 18 and 44, meet certain health
guidelines and committed to donate to any patient in need of a marrow
transplant.
Every year, more than 10,000 patients in the
United States are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases such as leukemia or lymphoma and
their best option for a cure is a bone marrow transplant. Because 70 percent of
patients do not have a matching donor in their family, they depend on the
registry as the source for their treatments.
On average, about 1 in 430 registry members
will go on to donate bone marrow or peripheral blood cells to a patient.
Because of the vast variation in tissue types, a registry member’s odds cannot
be predicted for becoming a donor.
Even though there are more than 3.5 million members
in the Be The Match registry, more are desperately needed. Since tissue types
are inherited, patients are most likely to match someone of their own race or
ethnicity.
This need is what spawned July being designated as “African
American Bone Marrow Awareness Month,” which highlights the critical need for
donors to help those affected by sickle
cell disease.
The
Franciscan Connection to Transplantation
The physicians at Indiana
Blood and Marrow Transplantation (IBMT) pioneered the first
transplant program for blood cancer in Indiana. This groundbreaking work, including
cutting-edge research, is present today at Franciscan St. Francis Health's
Cancer Center.
It is one
of only two programs in Indiana offering full-service transplant care. The unit
specializes in the treatment of patients with leukemia, Hodgkin’s or non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, multiple myeloma and many other malignancies and blood
disorders.
IBMT is highly regarded nationally and was one of the first
five programs in the nation accredited by the Foundation
for Accreditation of Cellular Therapy.
State-of-the-art tissue and bone marrow matching is performed
at Franciscan St. Francis Health through the HLA and Vascular Biology Lab,
which conducts the most advanced testing of donor and recipient bone marrow and
blood collections to improve transplant procedures.
To view one patient’s experience (“Charlie’s Story”) for the
treatment of leukemia at IBMT, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jws4rESOxnc&list=PL853BCF59A2AADE8C&index=23.
A
Final Word on Be The Match Drive
Potential donors attending the July 28 events also will have
the opportunity to help patients undergoing bone marrow transplants at
Franciscan St. Francis Health. During an ice cream social (1 p.m. to 3 p.m.) in
the Cancer Center lobby, raffle tickets will be sold for a chance to win gift
baskets.
For more information
about the Be The Match Drive, call 317-528-7308 or 317-528-5500.
