Umbilical Cord Blood Banking

If you are pregnant, you have a decision to make that maybe you aren't aware of. I guess if you aren't aware of the possibility of the decision, it will be made for you in the hospital. But lots of parents today are aware of the ability to store the precious stem cells found in the blood of the umbilical cord. It's called "banking" and most people who make the decision, choose to pay a fee to have their children's umbilical cord blood stored for as long as they want to pay the yearly maintenance. For those who don't choose, the hospital throws the cord blood away as medical waste.

There was an article recently on MSNBC about it called: Cord blood choice: Private fears vs. public good. It talks about the industry and a couple that decided to privately bank their child's cord blood and a couple that donated their child's to a public bank.

Kind of like donating regular blood, if everyone donated their baby's cord blood to a public bank, everyone would reap the rewards. But, like regular blood, there is a shortage of donations and while everyone has access to the public bank, they don't have the resources to meet everyone's needs.

When making the decision to privately bank or donate your baby's cord blood, you may be interested in the likelihood that you will ever use it. According to Wikipedia (a source I love because they tend to take medical jargon and explain it in layman's terms while citing where they got the info from), "The likelihood of using cord blood in private banks has rested mostly on the odds that the donor child or a family member will require a stem cell transplant. In the United States, the lifetime probability (up to age 70) that an individual will undergo an autologous transplant of their own stem cells is 1 in 435, the lifetime probability to undergo an allogeneic transplant of stem cells from a donor (such as a sibling) is 1 in 400, and the overall odds of undergoing any stem cell transplant is 1 in 217 (according to this study released in March 2008). These figures are based on actual transplant rates in 2001-2003."

However, those numbers are a little bit in dispute according to the MSNBC article; But the math behind that statistic is widely debated, said Dr. Dennis Confer, chief medical officer for the National Marrow Donor Program in Minneapolis, which maintains a public registry of donated cord blood units. The ViaCord number spreads the odds over 70 years instead of the minimum 20 years typically regarded as the standard for public cord blood storage. And it fails to note that most of the transplants would be likely to occur between ages 40 and 70, as the diseases that benefit from them increase.

“The likelihood that it will be used now or in the future is extremely low, probably 1 in 1,000,” said Confer, who adds that that’s probably a generous estimate.

Overall, the chance that a publicly stored unit of cord blood will ever be used is about 650 times higher than the odds that a privately banked unit will ever be needed, Confer added.

So, like I said, you have a decision to make if you are pregnant. Do you want to privately store your baby's umbilical cord blood? If not, please consider donating it to a public bank. That's what we did. We used CryoBanks International. They offer both private banking and public donation. And when donating all we had to do was fill out a questionnaire and then bring the kit to the hospital and give them a call when I was in labor. They did the rest.

Surprisingly, it was quite difficult to find a place to publicly donate Willow's cord blood. But we were happy to do it in the end. My ObGyn even asked me for information on public donation so she could tell patients about it.

Good luck in making your decision!

ETA:
A little bit more information on CryoBanks Intl (from their website):

Cryobanks International is a National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) umbilical cord blood processing and storage bank accredited by the AABB (formerly called the American Association of Blood Banks) in cord blood activities, licensed for tissue banking operations by the New York and New Jersey State Departments of Health and registered with the Food and Drug Administration.

In addition, many members of our staff are currently active in dozens of related organizations, such as:

• American Society of Hematology


• World Marrow Donor Association


• American Association of Tissue Banks


• American Society for Clinical Pathology


• International Cord Blood Society


• American Association of Bioanalysts


• State of Florida Department of Health - Division of Medical Quality Assurance


• American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Founded in 1993, Cryobanks International, Inc., a pioneer in the collection, isolation, and storage technologies for cord blood stem cells, is located in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a suburb of Orlando. Cryobanks International, initially formed as a semen bank and a clinical and andrology laboratory, expanded its scope of business into the field of cord blood banking in mid-1995. The company is focused on providing high-quality umbilical cord blood stem cell processing and storage for both private family use and public donation purposes.

Like I said, we did quite a bit of research when I was pregnant and this was the only completely FREE option we could find for publicly banking Willow's cord blood. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND them for those parents who wish to do the same.