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Donor selection for patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic SCT: assessment of the priorities of Canadian hematopoietic SCT physicians

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 48, pages 314–316 (2013)Cite this article

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The success of an allogeneic hematopoietic SCT (HSCT) is dependent on a multitude of factors, including the procurement of an optimal graft source.1 Further, the quality of this graft depends on a variety of donor and/or host characteristics. Most importantly, HLA compatibility between the recipient and donor is considered the dominant characteristic in this field,2 where it remains paramount in ensuring the potential success of the allogeneic HSCT. However, there are other important donor characteristics. These non-HLA characteristics may be broadly considered to be either traditional characteristics, such as ABO compatibility or novel, such as cytokine or KIR polymorphisms. Unsurprisingly, traditional characteristics have been reviewed extensively while novel characteristics are less studied. With better HLA matching techniques,3 these non-HLA donor characteristics would be further scrutinized, with a view that optimizing them would lead to improved transplant outcomes. Consequently, we sought to understand the relative priorities that the physicians of the Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group (CBMTG) place on such non-HLA donor characteristics using conjoint analysis (CA), a pair-wise choice-based survey method.

CA is a survey method of data collection and analysis originally developed in mathematical psychology and marketing, and has close theoretical links to multi-attribute utility theory.4 The basic premise of this technique is that any service or good can be described by characteristics, and the extent to which the individual values a good or service depends on the levels of these characteristics. It allows the estimation of the marginal rates of substitution, relative importance of each characteristic and the trade-offs between the characteristics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, Bone Marrow Transplant Program, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    J Tay & D Allan

  2. Clinical Epidemiology Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    J Tay, A Tinmouth, D Coyle & P Hébert

  3. Regenerative Medicine Program, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    D Allan

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  1. J Tay
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  2. D Allan
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  3. A Tinmouth
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  5. P Hébert
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Correspondence to J Tay.

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Tay, J., Allan, D., Tinmouth, A. et al. Donor selection for patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic SCT: assessment of the priorities of Canadian hematopoietic SCT physicians. Bone Marrow Transplant 48, 314–316 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/bmt.2012.137

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