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Family donor care management: principles and recommendations

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 45, pages 1269–1273 (2010)Cite this article

Abstract

The World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) is an international organization fostering collaboration in clinical transplantation and promoting the interests of unrelated stem cell donors. The WMDA has developed standards for the recruitment, counseling, work-up and subsequent donations to protect the interests of donors. Although the care of family donors has been carefully considered and managed in transplant centers (TCs) internationally over numerous years (and increasingly TCs are facing accreditation programs, which address this issue) there is currently a lack of standardized guidelines for the management of family donors. The underlying principles of family donor care are in many ways identical to those concerning unrelated donors, although key ethical considerations differ. Although the WMDA is primarily involved in the field of unrelated donors, we believe that it is important to collaborate with those involved with family donors, to standardize the care. This document hopes to encourage increased collaboration between those caring for related and unrelated donors, and build on the extensive work, which has already been undertaken in this field to homogenize care. We recognize that there will be financial, regulatory and logistic differences in different countries and that the manner in which these principles are achieved may vary.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Effie Petersdorf and the WMDA Board for critical reading of the document.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatric Stem Cell Transplantation, Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands

    S M van Walraven

  2. Swiss Blood Stem Cells, Bern, Switzerland

    G Nicoloso-de Faveri

  3. Clinical Immunology/Transfusion Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

    U A I Axdorph-Nygell

  4. Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, Glasgow, UK

    K W Douglas

  5. NHS Blood and Transplant, Sheffield, UK

    D A Jones

  6. Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre, Seattle, WA, USA

    S J Lee

  7. Division of Hematology/BMT, University of Utah, School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    M Pulsipher

  8. Section of Haemato-Oncology, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

    L Ritchie & B E Shaw

  9. Division of Hematology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    J Halter

  10. Anthony Nolan Trust, London, UK

    B E Shaw

Authors
  1. S M van Walraven
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  2. G Nicoloso-de Faveri
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  3. U A I Axdorph-Nygell
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  4. K W Douglas
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  5. D A Jones
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  6. S J Lee
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  7. M Pulsipher
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  8. L Ritchie
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  9. J Halter
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  10. B E Shaw
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on behalf of the WMDA Ethics and Clinical working groups

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S M van Walraven.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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van Walraven, S., Nicoloso-de Faveri, G., Axdorph-Nygell, U. et al. Family donor care management: principles and recommendations. Bone Marrow Transplant 45, 1269–1273 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2009.354

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2009.354

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