After our initial briefing, we will ask you for a blood sample.
Your blood sample is then used for what is known as confirmatory typing. This means your tissue characteristics will be analysed one more time and matched with those of the patient for confirmation. The analysis is designed to ensure the safety of the patient and to confirm that you are indeed their “genetic twin”. At the same time, we will check your blood for certain pathogens, such as HIV or hepatitis viruses, so as to rule out any possibility of infectious diseases being transferred to the patient through the transplant.
On occasions, a blood stem cell transplant may be particularly urgent for the patient, or we may already have all of the typing results that we need from you in our database.
In such cases, further confirmatory typing will not be required at first and will be carried out during the detailed medical examination which all donors undergo in preparation for a blood stem cell donation. The medical examination also serves as a further precaution to protect your health and is only carried out when we know from our briefing and from your health questionnaire that you are able to donate stem cells and consent to the procedure.