Under conscious sedation, you will stay awake but feel no pain. You will also have little to no memory of the procedure. Most people only receive local anesthetic for bone marrow aspirations and biopsies. If the procedure site is your pelvic bone, you will lie on your stomach or side.
A specialist doctor can then look at the cells or tissue under a microscope. You usually have the test in the outpatient department of the hospital. You're usually awake for the test but you have a local anaesthetic to numb the area. Some people have medicine to make them drowsy (sedation).
A bone marrow examination can be done with only local anesthesia to numb the area where the needles will be inserted. With local anesthesia, bone marrow aspiration, in particular, can cause brief, but sharp, pain. Many people choose to also have light sedation for additional pain relief.
Marrow donation is done under general or regional anesthesia so the donor experiences no pain during the collection procedure. Discomfort and side effects vary from person to person.
Your bone marrow transplant occurs after you complete the conditioning process. On the day of your transplant, stem cells are infused into your body through your central line. The transplant infusion is painless. You'll be awake during the procedure.
Conditional on surviving the first 2 years after BMT, the 30-year overall survival was 57.8% for the entire cohort, ranging from 80.6% for severe aplastic anemia to 52.5% for chronic myelogenous leukemia (eFigure 2 in the Supplement).
Engraftment and going home after bone marrow transplant
Every patient's situation is unique, but you can expect to spend 30 to 60 days in the hospital or at the outpatient clinic for your transplant. The goal of BMT is for the donated cells to enter your bone marrow and start making new cells.
A bone marrow transplant does not involve major surgery; rather, it's performed similarly to a blood transfusion. In a bone marrow transplant, bone marrow cells are collected from a donor's bloodstream or through a needle inserted into a bone, typically a pelvic bone.
The entire transplant process takes around one to two hours. To receive your new bone marrow cells, healthy cells from your donor will be collected through an IV (intravenous) catheter (again, similar to donating blood) and transfused into you through a central line. This is a painless procedure.
Medical specialists do bone marrow aspiration and biopsy procedures in a hospital, clinic, or their office. How long will the procedure take? When done together, the 2 procedures usually take about 30 minutes.
Once you're cleared to go home, recovery from bone marrow biopsy is typically quick, and you can continue daily activities as soon as you feel up to it. “The only limitation is not submerging the biopsy site in water until the skin is healed, which generally takes a couple of days,” Laura said.
What happens during a bone marrow biopsy? A bone marrow biopsy may be done on an outpatient basis. This means you go home the same day. Or you may stay in a hospital.
Your healthcare provider may perform a biopsy to diagnose blood disorders, cancer and many other conditions that may affect your bone marrow. The procedure lasts around 30 minutes and doesn't usually involve a hospital stay.
The biopsy needle may also cause a brief, usually dull, pain. Since the inside of the bone cannot be numbed, this test may cause some discomfort.
COMMON EFFECTS AFTER THE PROCEDURE:
Nausea and/or vomiting may occur in the hours after the procedure.
The time it takes to receive results depends on the which tests are being done on the bone marrow samples. Basic results can be available as soon as 24 to 48 hours. Whereas if for example you're having genetic tests on your bone marrow samples, these results can take a couple of weeks.
Most of these symptoms will improve once your white blood cells return, or engraft, at about 2 to 3 weeks following the transplant. However, for some patients, the symptoms of fatigue, feeling cold, and taste changes can linger for up to a few months.
After the chemotherapy and/or radiation is administered, the marrow transplant is given through the central venous catheter into the bloodstream. It is not a surgical procedure to place the marrow into the bone, but is similar to receiving a blood transfusion.
Talk to your doctor first
It's best to start slow and gradually increase your activity level. For example, start with a small goal like walking down the street and back. Then, increase your distance as you feel able. Continue to increase your distance until you are able to walk at least 30 minutes a day.
Hair loss is a common side effect of cancer treatment. Hair loss can happen as a side effect of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, radiation therapy, or a stem cell (bone marrow) transplant. These cancer treatments can harm the cells that help hair grow.
A bone marrow transplant is also called a stem cell transplant or, more specifically, a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. Transplantation can be used to treat certain types of cancer, such as leukemia, myeloma, and lymphoma, and other blood and immune system diseases that affect the bone marrow.
Bone marrow transplants treat cancers and other diseases of the blood and bone marrow by replacing unhealthy stem cells with healthy ones. BMT most commonly treats people with leukemia or lymphoma. BMT can be lifesaving for people whose bone marrow has been destroyed by chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
After an ALLO transplant, your doctor will give you chemotherapy, with or without radiation therapy or other drugs, to keep your body's immune system from destroying the new donated cells. These treatments affect your immune system and make infection risk higher.
For at least the first 6 weeks after transplant, until the new stem cells start making white blood cells (engraftment), you can easily get serious infections. Bacterial infections are most common during this time, but viral infections that were controlled by your immune system can become active again.
Success rate of bone marrow transplants for patients with non-malignant diseases. With a matched sibling donor – 70%-90% survival. With unrelated donors – 36%-65% survival.