Umbilical cord donation

Fortunately, donating blood has become an increasingly popular act, and in all hospitals and in many municipalities days are organized to collect the blood necessary to save many lives. But there is a donation that is not very well known and that is much more important and that not only serves to make transfusions in weak moments, but whose purpose is to cure serious diseases and thus save many lives from all over the world, we talk about the donation blood from the umbilical cord .

Umbilical cord blood has been a great unknown until a few years ago, where studies on the subject have discovered that it is something that was normally discarded after the baby was born, when it is a great source of stem cells . Stem cells are used to regenerate blood cells and can be the best way to give a transfusion to people who suffer from a disease related to the bone marrow, such as acute leukemias .

The main complication for those patients who need a transfusion of this type is that a compatible donor is not always found. The closest relatives will always be sought, but the possibility of finding someone whose blood is useful for the patient is very small, so donating becomes something much more important that we need to be aware of.

WHO AND HOW TO DONATE?

The donation of umbilical cord blood will be considered from pregnancy, so we will go to a donation bank and we will sign up to be a donor at the time our child is born. For this, the necessary tests that must be carried out are an analysis that confirms that there is no type of potentially communicable disease , not having HIV infection (popularly known as AIDS ) or having had sexual intercourse with a patient with it and not having injected any drug.

Nor can there be any history of communicable disease in the family and the pregnancy has had to pass normally, without the baby having suffered any major disease inside the womb during pregnancy or in the first months after birth, for which will be followed up. In addition, it must be taken into account not having received any blood transfusion in the 12 months prior to the donation.

The umbilical cord blood donation process is very simple. Although it is decided from the pregnancy, all this will be done after the baby is born. Once the cord that separates the newborn from its mother has been cut, a small puncture will be made in the cord, so that the blood will be extracted as normal as any laboratory test. The only difference is that the umbilical cord will still have to be attached to the placenta, which will still be inside the mother’s uterus . The extraction of the cord blood will not pose any risk to the mother, much less to the baby, who will no longer have any connection with the interior.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Once the umbilical cord blood has been drawn and placed in small tubes or bags, several options can be made. One of them is to deposit it in the bank with which it had previously been spoken , and that that blood be used for research or for donation to people who at some point in their lives need it to cure themselves of a serious disease.

Another option contemplated is the storage of this blood for autologous use, that is, for its own use for the baby that has just been born at the time of donation. As they are stem cells, it can be very useful if at some point in life, that baby has a communicable disease. Despite this, the cases that have developed throughout history do not give many possibilities when this type of situation occurs. The cause is that most of the diseases that these people can contract are congenital, that is, they are developed by their own body or in most of these cases, by their own blood, so the one we had stored is very unlikely to work for us. to heal. In these cases, one would have to resort to blood from another umbilical cord donated by another person and that was compatible. However, in the case in which the contracted disease is not congenital but acquired, the possibilities increase, and the storage of the blood from the umbilical cord itself would have been a good option to cure the disease and save the life of the donor in question.

If at the time we have decided that we are going to become umbilical cord blood donors, this is to be able to help other people, the blood will go from the banks to the necessary hospitals. On the other hand, if we have decided that the blood be used for research, we may have a small possibility of being able to recover it in the event that it is necessary to cure any disease of our own , or in the case in which a specialist recommends recovering it. for the healing of a compatible direct family member.

In any of the cases, donating blood in any way and especially that of the umbilical cord is a good option that we should all consider at the time we become pregnant, because by a simple extraction at the time of giving birth, we can save some life somewhere on the planet, even that of the baby that has just been born.