Monday, August 14 2017 19:56

ArmInfo.The first successful bone marrow transplantation operations in the South Caucasus region were held in Armenia. As the press secretary of the Ministry of Health of Armenia Anahit Aytayan told ArmInfo, two successful transplantations have already been carried out at the H. Yolyan Hematology Center in Yerevan. The first operation was carried out in April this year and two more similar operations are being prepared for myeloma patients.

According to Aytayan, bone marrow transplantation by this malignant  tumor is carried out because the stem cells are taken from the  patient himself, and therefore the patient does not need donor  assistance. This procedure, called autotransplantation, requires  careful preparation of the patient himself and the collection of his  own hematopoietic stem cells. The spokeswoman noted that the process  of collecting cells was carried out by a Russian transfusiologist  from the St. Petersburg Institute of Pediatric Hematology and  Transplantology after Raisa Gorbacheva Dmitry Pevtsov and a team of  Armenian hematologists led by Professor Smbat Dagbashyan. The bone  marrow transplantation is unprecedented for the countries of the  South Caucasus. In the transplantation of stem cells to date in  Armenia needs about 60 patients. High-tech transplantation is carried  out in several stages, which include preparatory chemotherapy, bone  marrow stimulation, collection of stem cells, their processing,  freezing, drug preparation of the patient and the process of stem  cell transplantation. The whole process can take a month or more, but  autotransplantation allows you to cure previously considered  incurable blood cancer. It should be recalled that in June 1999, the  "Armenian Bone Marrow Register" was created in Armenia, which became  a springboard for the preparation for the Bone Marrow Transplantation  Center. Because of the peculiarities of the genetic structure of  Armenians, it is almost impossible to detect the coincidence of  donors and recipients in the database of existing international  registries, and therefore the life of a large number of Armenian  children and adults is threatened due to the lack of compatible  donors. The existence of such an imbalance caused the creation in  Armenia of a registry of voluntary donors of bone marrow  transplantation, which will help to solve this problem, and later to  begin the practice of performing bone marrow transplantation.