Bone marrow transplants are required when a person’s bone marrow becomes damaged or diseased to such an extent that it stops functioning properly.
This may be due to conditions such as acute leukaemia or chronic leukaemia (cancer of the bone marrow cells), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system), or a related cancer of the blood.
Other diseases that may require a bone marrow transplant include:
- genetic diseases, such as sickle cell anaemia, where the bone marrow does not produce enough healthy red blood cells
- immune-deficiency illnesses, such as aplastic anaemia, which causes the immune system to stop working properly
- other diseases that affect the blood, such as multiple myeloma, a cancer that affects blood plasma cells.
Bone marrow transplants are also sometimes necessary following certain treatments, such as high-dose chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which are often used to treat cancer. These treatments tend to damage healthy stem cells as well as destroying cancer cells.
