Important Things to Learn About Cord Blood Preservation

by Ishika Gaur Advertiser

The third trimester of the pregnancy is very crucial; it is when you need to take care of a lot more things than just taking care of your health. The most important thing that you should be concerned about is learning about cord blood banking or cord blood preservation in India. The blood that remains in the umbilical cord & placenta after the child's birth is rich in stem cells. Once the baby is born, and even if the cord clamping is delayed, stem cells can be collected and preserved in cryogenic storage. Parents have a choice between donating cord blood to a public bank for free, or paying a private bank to store it for their family.

Types of Umbilical Cord Blood Banking

Cord blood preservation in India can be done in three ways:

Private Banks-

They charge an initial fee for the collection, for processing and a yearly maintenance fee for cord blood preservation. Here the preserved cells can only be used for personal use.

Public Banks-

They don't charge for collection, but also they don't reserve it for any specific donor. This implies that the donations are available for the general public.

Direct-donation Banks-

These blood banks collect cord blood even without charging fees. Usually, these banks accept family-specific donations to reserve the stem cells for the family. This type of banking helps majorly when the sibling of the infant has a disease that can be treated with the umbilical cord blood stem cells.

How Cord Blood can be used

· The component extracted from the umbilical cord blood has specialized stem cells that can form all the tissue & organ cells of the body. These cells can actually be used for replacing other cells in the body that are abnormal or those cells which have been destroyed by some disease.

· Once cord blood is preserved, it is typically accessible for use pretty quickly, usually in a couple of weeks.

· Generally, the volume of cord blood collected is 50-100mL, and this amount can provide a dose for a child or small adult.

Advantages of Banking Cord Blood

· Stem cells preserved from one child can be potentially used for any of the child's siblings as there are very high chances of being a positive genetic match.

· Leukaemia, Lymphoma and Myeloma are the three diseases which can be commonly treated with stem cells. Other than these, stem cells have also been used for the treatment of blood disorders, congenital metabolic disorders, and immune deficiencies.

· The process of cord blood collection and preservation is a low risk for both the mother and the child, and there is very little risk for transmission of infection in cord blood stem cell transplant.