Paving the Way to Hematopoietic Stem Transplantation Worldwide

Abstract

For newly developing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) teams, the minimal essential requirements for the organization of the transplant team, i.e., provision of a clean environment, patient selection, identifying a sibling donor, gaining informed consent from patient and donor, patient decontamination, patient preconditioning, prophylaxis of graft-versus-host disease, stem cell harvest, and supportive care, are summarized. Then the current activities of the Worldwide Network for Blood and Marrow Transplantation, including the annual global activity survey of HSCT, are introduced. Finally, some proposals for future aspects of HSCT are listed, such as how to improve HSCT outcomes, how to fulfill the potential requirements of HSCT, the importance of long-term patient and donor follow-up, possible expansion of the diseases targeted by HSCT, and the importance of the creation of a global outcome registry system.