What’s the likelihood of my child, or a member of my family, needing a stem cell transplant?
It depends on the illness and the age of the patient and the timeframe over which you access the likelihood of needing a transplant. If we look at a 20 year horizon, the quoted chances of a person needing an: • autologous transplant (using their own stem cells) before the age of 20 has been estimated at between 1 in 5,000 and 1 in 20,000. • allogeneic transplant (using donated stem cells) is estimated at between 1 in 1,700 and 1 in 20,000. However, this data only assesses the probability over a period of twenty years. If we were to look at an assessment over the course of a typical lifetime up to age 70, the probability that a person will require a transplant of their own stem cells drops dramatically to 1 in 450 and the likelihood of requiring any transplant, from yourself or a sibling, is now 1 in 220.
