Michigan
MI, United States
Michigan has state legislation around cord blood education that follows the Institute of Medicine guidelines and mandates/encourages physicians to educate expectant parents about ALL forms of cord blood banking. The Michigan bill was enacted 4 Jan. 2007 and becomes effective "upon determination of sufficient funds" for development of educational materials.
FAQs
- If I donate my baby's cord blood, will that child have free access to cord blood for a transplant?
- No. When a mother signs the Informed Consent to donate cord blood, she gives up any guaranteed access to that blood. The blood may not be banked, and if it is banked, it may be released to some one else. There have been cases where families needed their child's cord blood and got it back from a public bank, but it is important to realize there are no guarantees of access to donated cord blood. Cord blood donors also do not receive guarantees of priority treatment or waived fees if your child later needs a donor. The reward for donating cord blood is the possibility that your baby may Be The Match that saves a life.
- Processing: Must cord blood be processed before storage?
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The earliest cord blood transplants were performed with whole cord blood. Thus, it is not absolutely necessary to process cord blood in order to save patient lives. There has never been a prospective randomized trial to compare transplant patient outcomes with cord blood that had been stored whole versus processed.
Most cord blood banks, both public and private, now process cord blood to remove both the plasma and the red cells, and cryo-preserve the remaining buffy coat holding stem cells. Some banks also save the removed red cells and plasma in companion storage. Some banks save a sample of maternal blood.
The removal of plasma is also called volume reduction. The volume reduction enables more collection units to fit in a freezer and requires less cryogenic nitrogen per unit.
Also, the majority of banks remove red blood cells prior to freezing, primarily because these cells often burst during freezing and release iron from hemoglobin that can be toxic. The alternate to removing the red cells before freezing is to wash any broken cells out of the collection upon thaw. Removing the red cells also removes the donor's blood type (the ABO and Rh types). When cord blood goes from a donor to a patient for a transplant, the donor and patient can be compatible on all the HLA types used for transplant matching and still have incompatible red blood types.
- What questions should parents ask a Family Bank about Shipping & Handling?
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- Is the cost of shipping included in the contract?
- Does the shipping company offer bed-side pick-up?
- On weekends, are the laboratory staff in-house or on-call?
- Does the bank guarantee to get the blood to the lab and processed within a certain time window?
- Does the shipping container have a temperature logger?
- If the bank uses a courier, does the courier have possession of the cord blood throughout transit? (ie: Does the courier sub-contract to another shipping company that is not a medical courier)?
- Is the cost of shipping included in the contract?
