best hospitals for BMT

[Lynn del]

I was told I need a BMT and I would like to know what are the best hospitals for this treatment. I was considering Memorial Slaon-kettering in NYC. Has anyone had BMT there? ANd who was the doctor? I was diagnosed with AA. Thanks, Lynn

[Gwin Gover]

Hi, Lynn --

My information might be a bit out-dated as I had my SCT 8 years ago for MDS, but at that time, the U.S. center that had done the most transplants and had the highest patient survival rate was the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

I found the information at that time on the National Marrow Donor Program web site so that would be a good place to start looking for information. It told me how many transplants had been done for each transplantable illness and the results. Good luck in your search.

Gwin

[Neil Cuadra]

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has a very good reputation, as do the other New York-area treatment centers in our Treatment Center list. You can ask any center for more information about the number and types of transplants they do, and for what diseases.

There are advantages to staying close to where you live because you'll have your entire support team there, i.e., your other doctors and your family and friends. That will also make it easier for pre-transplant and post-transplant care.

Getting tours and talking to doctors at more than one treatment center will also help you decide. We toured "the Hutch" when we were there for a second opinion before my wife's transplant, and we're sure we would have gotten excellent care there, but we chose to stay closer to home in Southern California, and it proved to be a good decision.

[Lynn del]

Hi Gwen,
Thank you for replying about the best hospitals. Lynn

[Lynn del]

Hi Neil,
Thank you for replying. I agree with you about staying close to home. I had the ATG at Sloan-Kettering and my count didn't go up right away, so the doctor wanted to do a BMT. About 4 weeks later they did go up. So I didn't want to go back to him. Plus he didn't test me for the horse or rabbit and I had the worse case of horse serum sickness he said he has ever seen. I still have nerve damage, which occurs from horse serum. I'm going to go to another doctor there. Lynn

[trishgen2001]

My daughter had ATG about 2 weeks ago. The first week, she felt pretty crappy (flu-like, headaches). At the end of the first week, she was amazed at how much better she felt. A couple of days after that, the joint pains started. We're on our 3rd type of pain meds and are visiting a physical therapist early next week. These are really getting her down. I'm trying to get the pain meds in her before it starts, because once it does, we can't seem to get a handle on it. We've tried heat and ice about everything else we can think of. I really wasn't prepared for the pain! If anyone has any ideas of what she can do for some relief, they would be appreciated. On a better note, her platelets were up from 10 to 19 on the first Monday after treatment and her ANC's were up from 400 to 1700. We're sure that's a good sign!

[Wendy Beltrami]

Hi Trish,

When she was in the hospital, was she given prednisone? And if so, is she still taking it? The first time my son had ATG, he was given prednisone and had a slow taper after discharge. His serum sickness was very mild. Just a few hives. The second time, the prednisone was stopped cold turkey at discharge, a few days later we ended up in the emergency room- fever, head to to hives and joint pain so severe he couldn't even get out of bed without help. There wasn't a spot on his body that didn't hurt. More prednisone and a slow taper took care of his discomfort.

Wendy/mom to Grant
dx 12/4/98 AA

[trishgen2001]

Yes, Jess is still on the steroids. I'm a little confused, they think this joint pain may be steroid induced? She was taking 80 mg daily during and for 10 days after the ATG, this week we cut it in half. The joint pain began before we cut the steroid. Maybe I should ask her Dr. if we should wait before we taper the prednisone?