Age No Longer Should be a Barrier to Stem Cell Transplantation for Older Patients with Blood Cancers
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 - 16:00
in Health & Medicine
Age alone no longer should be considered a defining factor when determining whether an older patient with blood cancer is a candidate for stem cell transplantation. That's the conclusion of the first study summarizing long-term outcomes from a series of prospective clinical trials of patients age 60 and over who were treated with the mini-transplant, a "kinder, gentler" form of allogeneic (donor cell) stem cell transplantation developed at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The findings are published Nov. 2 in JAMA.