Mumbai: Apollo Hospitals launches state-of-the-art bone marrow transplant unit

Apollo Hospitals Navi Mumbai, a multi-specialty tertiary care hospital accredited with JCI and NABH quality accreditation, recently launched an advanced 3-bed HEPA filtered Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) unit.

The new unit, a standalone dedicated facility for bone marrow transplantation, will bring international standards of cancer care to offer patients from Navi Mumbai and surrounding areas an accessible facility for bone marrow transplant.

The state-of-the-art advanced BMT unit will provide quality cancer care and treatment and will be supported by an experienced and qualified team of haemato-oncologists, BMT Physician and trained nursing staff.

The BMT unit will cater to patients with blood cancer including leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma as well as other hematological disorders like thalassemia, aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease and inherited immune deficiency disorders.

Bone Marrow Transplant is a life-saving procedure and is the only way to cure many of the patients diagnosed with a blood cancer. BMT involves taking a patient's damaged or destroyed bone marrow stem cells and replacing them with healthy stem cells from a donor. BMT can be autologous or allogenic. Autologous transplants use the patient's own blood cells, while allogenic transplants use cells from a matched donor.

The BMT unit was inaugurated by Dr. Abhijat Sheth, President National Board of Examinations, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and Dr. Navin Khattry, Deputy Director ACTREC, Professor and Head, BMT Unit, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.

"There are around many people who are diagnosed with blood cancer or other life-threatening disorders of the blood every year in the country. Bone Marrow Transplantation is the only hope that these patients have for a cure. The new BMT unit will offer world-class facilities to patients with support throughout the treatment from evaluation and preparation to the bone marrow transplant procedure followed by long-term monitoring after the transplant. The BMT unit will have facilities for both autologous and allogenic transplants," said Dr. Narendra Trivedi, CEO, Apollo Hospitals Navi Mumbai.

The 3 HEPA filtered rooms each have a dedicated air handling unit to ensure strict infection control. A separate laminar flow for sterile chemotherapy preparation is dedicated to the transplant patients. The BMT unit also has a Cryopreservation Unit with -80c deep freezers for long term storage of stem cells. The transplant rooms have been provided with laminar flow and other facilities for infection control.

Dr. Punit Jain, Senior Consultant, Haemato-Oncology and BMT Physician, Apollo Hospitals Navi Mumbai said, "Our team of experienced doctors supported by the advanced infrastructure and technology will offer treatment at par with international standards. Bone Marrow Transplant is a complex procedure and requires teamwork between multiple specialties including transfusion medicine, clinical hematology, pathology, microbiology, immunology, and pharmacology.