Blood left in the umbilical cord of your new born baby and placenta are collected and stored in cord blood bank in order to get it used in future for treating variety of other diseases. Just as people donate blood for the benefit of the society, cord blood is also useful in treating variety of deadly diseases in the environment. The content of cord blood is the life saving stem cell for many patients suffering from variety of diseases.
Basically there are two ways of storing the cord blood.
- Storing the baby’s cord blood to the public cord blood bank from where the patient party needing it can easily avail it
- You can also make a storage of baby’s cord blood in family cord blood bank so that anyone in the family can use it
What is the collection methodology of cord blood?
Just after the birth of the new born baby, when lady secretes vaginally when the baby comes out in a normal delivery, the umbilical cord is clamped and cut it. This can be done either by the doctor or your partner. The process of collecting the cord blood from the umbilical cord of the lady is really safe and does not indulge any pain.
Clamping and cutting
At the time of collecting cord blood, you can also delay the activity of cord clamping. But, you need to take it in mind that the delay process is brief. If you delay it more, a clot will form in the blood in the cord.
Transfer to the bank
The blood so collected is then shipped to the cord blood bank. The Cord blood also goes through the procedure of several tests. The cord bank also makes a good effort of preserving the cord blood once it meets the standard and quality of the particular bank. Researchers are studying a lot to find out more ways through which the cord blood can be collected and preserved properly.
Way of extracting cord blood
The surgeon or the medical practitioner will easily make an insertion of the needle in the umbilical vein in that particular part which is attached to the placenta. You do not need to be afraid and think about safety as the needle will not be anywhere around your baby. All the blood so collected is drained into a bag. Roughly around 1 to 5 ounces are collected. The whole process takes only 10 minutes.
What are the Valuable factors of cord blood?
One of the richest source of blood stem cells is none other than cord blood. It is important for people to note that the stem cells are building blocks of immune system and blood. They also have the ability of getting transformed into various other types of cells. The value of the cord blood is associated with the fact that it helps in repairing of blood vessels, tissues and organs.
You can now find the stem cells in hair follicles, human embryos, baby teeth, muscles, fetal tissues etc. Researchers have found out that each part of the human being is confined with the stem cells. But, the stem cells in every part of the body are not appropriate or so much rich to be used in treating variety of diseases.
Different types of patients are treated in different ways. For example, patient suffering from leukemia is often provided with chemotherapy. The therapy is put on the deceased cell so that the production of normal blood cell can easily take place in no time. But, in not all cases the rays or the chemotherapy works. The recent research says that stem cell therapy will be the best way to treat the disease like leukemia.
Stem cell transplant is nothing but the transfusion of the stem cells in the bone marrow, cord blood as well as the peripheral blood which can be really effective if done from a healthy donor. This will be easy to create new blood as well as immune system. This gives the patient better chance so that he can more towards the stage of recovery.
It is been expected that cord blood will soon become a wonderful source of transplant for all diseases.
