In: Nursing
Make a discussion of about 2-3 paragraphs about whether or not people should bank their baby's cord blood?
Make sure to answer the following questions in your discussion:
What is a cord bank?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of cord banks?
Would donating the baby's cord be a better option? Why yes or no?
Ans) A cord blood bank is a facility which stores umbilical cord blood for future use. Both private and public cord blood banks have developed in response to the potential for cord blood in treating diseases of the blood and immune systems.
- The main advantage of cord blood is that it does not have to be exactly matched to the patient like transplants from an adult donor. The main disadvantages are that it is hard to collect enough cord blood to transplant an adult, and cord blood stem cells are slow to engraft.
- The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics don't recommend routine cord blood storage. The groups say private banks should only be used when there's a sibling with a medical condition who could benefit from the stem cells.
One reason why donations to public cord banks are so valuable is that stem cells from cord blood do not need to be as perfectly matched for a transplant as do stem cells from adult bone marrow. Stem cells from cord blood are not as mature, so the transplant patient's body is much less likely to reject them.