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Bone marrow transplant

    There are two grounds on which a patient may be advised to undergo bone marrow transplantation. One is allegoric transplantation, in which new bone marrow - usually from a close relative without cancer - is transplanted into the patient to help the body to fight the cancer. Identical twins are fortunate in having a walking supply of perfect bone marrow to draw on. Autologous transplantation is used when the doctors want to use massive doves of chemotherapy - dose levels that would normally kill the bone marrow cells. In this case, the bone marrow is taken out before the chemotherapy course and replaced afterwards. This is perhaps the most dangerous and painful procedure known to modern medicine. The risks of death from the procedure alone are very high. It claims a success rate of forty to sixty per cent in the case of early stage leukaemias and some lymphomas - declining to ten per cent with late-stage cancers. Often it is a time-buying exercise. Apart from a few cancers such a testicular cancer and possibly breast cancer, solid tumours do not generally respond well to this procedure.