Patient's question:
Treatment and Effect: Is the actual value of storing umbilical cord blood significant? Can it be stored for many years? Is the quantity sufficient? What kind of assistance do you care about: Please explain for me, thank you...Doctor's answer:
Umbilical cord blood refers to the blood that flows from the placenta and umbilical cord after the umbilical cord is cut at birth. Umbilical cord blood contains self-healing stem cells, which can be used to replace bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells for transplantation. Currently, umbilical cord blood is mainly used to treat blood diseases, including leukemia, lymphoma, anemia, etc. Moreover, since the immune function of stem cells in umbilical cord blood has not yet fully developed, it is relatively easier to match, especially among family members with a higher probability.Recommendation:
Today, umbilical cord blood banks are divided into two types: one is a public umbilical cord blood bank, which stores randomly donated normal newborn umbilical cord blood and can be used for any patient with a suitable match; the other is an autologous umbilical cord blood bank, which stores the umbilical cord blood of the fetus itself as a reserve for future hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for the individual or their relatives. Typically, hospitals recommend parents to pay to store umbilical cord blood in an autologous bank.
The greatest utility of umbilical cord blood is to perform transplantation for leukemia patients. However, the incidence of leukemia is very low, approximately one in 100,000, so the likelihood of using it for oneself is extremely small. Even if it can be used, if the person is over 16 years old, the amount of umbilical cord blood may not be sufficient. Additionally, storing umbilical cord blood requires a temperature of minus 200 degrees Celsius, and preserving it for over a decade at such a temperature makes it unclear how many stem cells can maintain sufficient activity.
Furthermore, if the blood in an autologous umbilical cord blood bank is not used by the individual, it will be discarded after 20 years, and others cannot use it, leading to significant waste. If a family has a history of blood diseases, and the risk of the (offspring) developing the disease is high, storage may be considered.