A bone marrow transplant to cure acute myelocyte leukemia, the first of its kind in Vietnam, has been successfully performed by doctors in Ho Chi Minh City. The success of the transplantation - which is also called hematopoietic stem cell transplant - was confirmed at a press conference held yesterday at the HCMC-based Blood Transfusion and Haematology Hospital, where the process was carried out on April 25. The patient who received the transplant is Cao Xuan Hiep, 21, of southern Dong Nai Province, and the transplant donor is his elder sister, Cao Thi Nguyet, 26. Nguyet’s stem cells have been collected and preserved properly for 20 days before they were used for the transplant. During the process of transplantation, no intravenous antibiotics were used for Hiep, who later recovered and was discharged on May 22, said Dr. Phu Chi Dung, director of the Institute, at the press briefing. The cost of the transplant was about VND300 million (US$ 14,420), 70 percent of which was covered by health insurance. In related news, doctors at Vietnam’s National Hospital of Pediatrics in Hanoi have also used bone marrow transplant to cure lethal skin blisters in a four- year-old boy, Nguyen Viet Anh, of Vinh Phuc Province. After 40 days of getting a bone marrow stem cell transplant, the boy had no more blister on the skin, doctors said Tuesday. Bone marrow transplantation involves extracting bone marrow containing normal stem cells or peripheral stem cells from a healthy donor, and transferring it to a recipient whose body cannot manufacture proper quantities of normal blood cells.

The goal of the transplant is to rebuild the recipient’s blood cells and immune system and hopefully cure the underlying disease.

Bone marrow transplantation may be used in conjunction with additional treatments, such as chemotherapy, for various types of leukemia, Hodgkin’s disease, lymphoma, breast and ovarian cancer, renal cell carcinoma, myelodysplasia, myelofibrosis, germ cell cancer, and other cancers.