Post News Network
Cuttack, Feb 21: The Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) team of the SCB Medical College and Hospital here scripted a national record by conducting a complex surgery on a 75-year-old cancer patient recently.
The patient was identified as Jabar Khan, a resident of Bhubaneswar.
Khan was diagnosed with Stage III Multiple Myeloma, and the cancer was initially controlled by four cycles of chemotherapy. He was later lined up by doctors for a bone marrow transplant, and was injected with colony stimulating factors (which promote production of stem cells in the bone marrow).
Doctors gave him a Noval drug called Plerixafor at 11:30 am Thursday, and followed it up with an enumeration of stem cells in his blood Friday morning with the help of a Flow Cytometer.
Making the entire operation complex was Khan’s age. The upper age limit of autologous bone marrow transplant practised in Asia and Europe is 65, as older patients tend to have insufficient bone marrow resulting in inadequate stem cell collection for engraftment. Besides, the conditioning chemotherapy which is done to eliminate cancer cells from the body prior to the engraftment of stem cells proves to be highly toxic in older patients. In Khan’s case, the stem cell count stood at 26 per microlitre, which is considered to be satisfactory for stem cell collection. The stem cells were collected by Apheresis Equipment. Total stem cell yield in this case was satisfactory for successful bone marrow transplant. This complex multiple procedure was conducted by a team of doctors and paramedical staff namely Prof RK Jena, Prof SB Rout, Dr Sudha Sethy and Dr RK Nayak.
There are only three leading bone marrow transplant centres which undertake autologous bone marrow transplant up to 75 years of age: University of Minnesota, University of Seattle and John Hopkin’s Institute.
