Blood and Marrow Transplant

The Cancer Center's Bone Marrow and Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant program at Westchester Medical Center was originally launched in October 1983 with its first related allogeneic transplant patient. During the two decades since its launch, the program has grown substantially adding autologous and unrelated allogeneic transplants, as well as collection services to our program offerings. We are accredited by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP).

In addition, our team has pioneered many of the advances applied today as standard of care for this population including:

1. Defining the engraftment efficacy of peripheral stem cells versus bone marrow
2. Evaluating an array of conditioning regimens designed to enhance tumor responsiveness while reducing toxicity and numerous conditioning strategies
3. Testing supportive care regimens to improve the patient's overall transplant experience. To date, more than 2,000 transplants have been performed by the group.  

The Blood Cell Transplant service is staffed by attending physicians who have a significant experience in the field.  They include Dr. Tauseef Ahmed; Chief, Dr. Karen Seiter; Dr. Delong Liu; and Dr. Mehmet Ozkaynak, Pediatrics. In addition, we have two Nurse Coordinators, Oncology Clinical Social Workers, and a specially trained nursing staff. 
 
The program is active in both pediatric and adult transplants. It performs related and unrelated allogeneic transplants. An added feature in 2001 and 2002 has been the establishment of a minitransplant program, which allows us reliable investment in patients who were otherwise not eligible for a standard allogeneic transplant.
 
Patients are cared for in a 12-bed HEPA filtered unit. We perform high-resolution DNA typing through Histogenetic Inc. High-resolution DNA typing can be performed at the molecular level and leads to much more sophisticated  tissue typing information which in turn improves our match for the patient.