bone marrow transplant (BMT)

see also:

• oncology
• lymphoma
• leukaemia
• NSW patient information booklet on autologous BMT (pdf)
• EVIQ.org: Autologous conditioning protocol BEAM (carmustine etoposide cytarabine melphalan) prior to bone marrow transplantation

• a bone marrow transplant is usually done to allow the oncology team to use high dose chemotherapy to give a better chance of creating remission from lymphoma, multiple myeloma or leukaemia, as these high doses will destroy the bone marrow cells and a transplant will help to replenish this after the chemotherapy
• the transplant is usually autologous - using previously harvested and frozen stem cells which can be extracted from peripheral blood after stimulation with G-CSF, if that fails a bone marrow harvest may be required
• prior to the infusion of stem cells, the patient is given high dose chemotherapy regime such as BEAM for the 6 days prior.