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Recommended frequency of follow up bone marrow biopsies?
Hi all,
Haven't posted here in a while. No news is usually good news in that regard. My son, now 11 has been in full AA remission for about 6 years. In recent past, our medical follow up consisted of a yearly blood draw to run a complete blood count. The doctor is now indicating that they would like to do a yearly bone marrow biopsy going forward. The theory being that frequent biopsies would monitor for potential changes to leukemia or mds before it would show via a complete blood count. If someone needed a bone marrow transplant the hope would be that the earlier one knew that was going to be the course of action the better the possible outcome.
The last bone marrow biopsey occurred about 5 years ago. It's not the end of the world, but neither my son or I are eager to have him undergo a yearly biopsy. We try to give him as normal of a childhood as possible under the circumstances.
I'm curious, if anyone else out there in remission undergoes frequent biopsies. If so, what is the frequency? Thanks for any input.
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Paul
Son diagnosed 3/2006 with VSAA at age of 4 years old; No sibling match; received IST with CsA, counts reached normal level after about 6 months; Currently in remission.
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