Why Cord Blood and Tissue Banking Is Ideal Upon Newborn Birth

Cord blood banking!

This can save the life of your child or even yours in the future. The stem cells of cord blood can be used for treating a lot of severe health conditions.

If you do not opt for cord blood, you will need to go for bone marrow transplantation in some serious cases. But cord blood stem cells are more effective than bone marrow stem cells.

It means with cord blood, you can actually save your child from life-threatening diseases. Even the cord blood stem cells can be used for your other child or any close relatives in case of a perfect match.

Here, we will guide you with cord blood and tissue banking.

What Is Cord Blood And Tissue Banking? 

It is basically a process of collecting stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta along with storing them properly for future use. These stem cells are potentially lifesaving immature cells, which can assume the form of any other cells.

When you have a child, there are a lot of things you need to think of. And the blood from your baby’s umbilical cord is one of those. The umbilical cord connects the baby with its mother when the baby is in the womb. Previously umbilical cord used to be thrown away after birth.

But, at present, a lot of parents are storing the blood and tissue or the umbilical cord for future use.

The Use Of Cord Blood And Tissues

The fluid of the umbilical cord is packed with stem cells. Those stem cells have the power to treat cancer, several blood diseases such as anemia, along with some immune system disorders that disrupt the ability of your body to defend itself.

This particular fluid can be easily collected and contain ten times more stem cells than the sample that is collected from bone marrow. Also, the stem cells that are collected from bone marrow rarely carry any type of infectious disease and are half likely to get rejected as stem cells of an adult.

How To Get It?

In case you want to store the cord blood, it needs to be done after birth. Here, the doctor clamps the baby’s umbilical cord in 2 places around 10 inches apart. Then the doctor cuts the cord and separates the mother from the baby.

After that, they collect a minimum of 40 milliliters of blood from the umbilical cord. The blood is collected in a sealed bag and sent to a cord blood or bank for testing and storage purposes.

This entire process just takes a few minutes. The best part is that it does not hurt the mother and the baby as well.

In some cases, the cord blood bank might also send instructions in order to collect the mother’s cord tissue and placenta as well. In this case, the banking kit will also have certain instructions along with blood collection tubes.

Why To Store Baby’s Cord Blood

Cord blood banking is usually recommended in case an infant has a full sibling with a malignant or genetic condition that is treatable with cord blood transplantation. These types of conditions usually include the following:

• Thalassemia.
• Krabbe’s disease.
• Sickle cell anemia.
• Aplastic anemia.
• Lymphoma(both non-Hodgkin’s and Hodgkin’s).
• Immune deficiencies, like ACID or severe combined immunodeficiency.
• Leukemia.

Why Cord Blood and Tissue Banking Ideal Upon Newborn Birth?

Now that you get a basic understanding of cord blood and tissue banking, you might be thinking about whether you should go for it or not. If you are having a baby, you might also have a question about whether it needs to be done upon newborn birth or after that.

Well, when you are opting for cord blood or tissue banking, it is best to do it upon newborn birth.

Cord blood is collected and has to be stored in a proper way. The umbilical cord is usually thrown away after the birth of the baby. As we have mentioned earlier, after the birth, the doctor cuts the umbilical cord.

At this particular point, the cord blood and tissues are collected and sent to the lab and cord blood banks for essential tests and storage. The cord blood and tissues can not be collected after that.

Although you can take some measures and store that umbilical cord for a little while and then collect the cord blood and tissues, at the same time, preserving the umbilical cord can be risky and also expensive. So, instead of that, it is best to opt for cord blood and tissue banking after newborn birth.