US/Eastern Umbilical Cord Blood Donation Perplexing Parents
Cynthia Demos
Aug 2, 2010
New parents have plenty of decisions to make when their child is born. From deciding on a name to picking the right hospital, parents are inundated with decisions.
But, there's a critical decision mothers must make when they give birth about whether to privately or publicly bank their babies' umbilical cord blood.
Marisabel Davalos of Miami is one of those mothers who chose to bank their newborn's cord blood. She and her husband decided to privately bank their babies' cord blood.
"We did it with our first son and with the experience of that was a positive experience that prompted us to do it with our daughter," Davalos said.
A baby's umbilical cord contains unique stem cells that can help patients with a number of medical conditions. That's why parents are urged to bank it at birth.
"Currently we know we can treat a number of blood diseases such as leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell disease, and they are currently being studied to treat disease such as diabetes, brain injury, heart attacks and other types of tissue damage," explained Dr. Randy Fink, the medical director of The Miami Center of Excellence for Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Fink is an advocate of private cord blood banking.
"Having cord blood stored for your child, is having an insurance policy. It's something that you hope you'll never have to use. But to have it available for you in the event that the need arises is priceless," added Fink.
It might be priceless to some, but expensive to others.
And according to Dr. Lyle Feinstein, the director of the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Memorial Hospital West, private banking is discouraged by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics. He says the chances are slim that your child will ever need privately banked blood.
"Like any insurance policy you need to know what you're paying for. The chance of a child ever needing his own cord blood cells throughout the course of his life is 0.04%. The chance of a sibling needing that child's cord blood is 0.07%."
With public donation, the blood is collected from the placenta, processed and transferred to a facility to be stored. The tissue is typed and entered into the National Bone Marrow Donor Bank for use by critically ill patients around the world.
"The public donation serves a tremendous need for patients. The potential for lives saved here is extraordinary," Feinstein added.
Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines just became the first Broward hospital to offer public cord blood donation giving mothers in South Florida another option. South Miami Hospital is the only one in Miami-Dade that offers public cord donation.
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