The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) has published the 2001-2002 Transplant Center Access Directory—a free resource for all patients who are undergoing a blood stem cell transplant and do not have a matching donor in their family.
"Patients faced with the option of unrelated blood stem cell transplantation are dealing with one of the most complex medical procedures in modern medicine," said Pamela Weisdorf, director of the NMDP’s Office of Patient Advocacy. "This directory contains the information patients and their families need to choose an NMDP Transplant Center to receive their medical treatment."
The NMDP maintains a centrally organized computer registry of more than 4 million volunteers who are willing to be stem cell donors for patients unrelated to them.
Useful Information
To receive a transplant from an NMDP donor, patients must be treated at one of the transplant centers in the NMDP Network. The Transplant Center Access Directory contains useful information about every NMDP Transplant Center, including contact information for the medical director, coordinator, patient advocate, and financial worker; a list of the center’s attending physicians; donor match criteria; type of facility (adult, pediatric, or both); access criteria and how to arrange consultations; research interests; financial criteria (deposits required) and whether assistance is provided; cost data for services; transplant history (NMDP-facilitated and all other activity, ie, autologous, related allogeneic, etc); center-specific survival (risk-adjusted percentage); and raw survival data, categorized by age and disease.
The Transplant Center Access Directory also provides a list, with phone number, of all NMDP International Transplant Centers, as well as information on a variety of subjects related to transplants that may help patients, family members, and medical professionals. These topics include steps in choosing a transplant center and changing a transplant center, how to understand individual transplant center information, how to understand survival statistics, and how to find out about transplant insurance coverage.
To request a free copy of the Transplant Center Access Directory, call the NMDP’s Office of Patient Advocacy toll free at 1-888-999-6743. The entire directory can also be found on-line at www.marrow.org.
A 52-year-old man presented with an erythematous lesion in the axilla of unknown duration. Surgical excision was performed. What is your diagnosis?
