Birth brings new lives; saves lives

Saint Anthony first region hospital to offer cord-blood donations

CROWN POINT A byproduct of birth will help give new life to patients who are suffering from serious illnesses.

Starting March 3, Saint Anthony will become the first hospital in the Northwest Indiana area to offer umbilical cord-blood donations, according to Terri Tibbot, president and chief executive officer of Fort Wayne-based Donor Services of Indiana, which is overseeing the program.

Non-embryonic stem cells in cord blood treat a variety of ailments, including cancer, leukemia, multiple sclerosis and anemia and can be used in place of bone marrow transplants. “Cord blood provides a one-in-20,000 match, while bone marrow offers a one-in-200,000 match,” Tibbot says.

Cord blood also helps grow bone and cartilage, skin and tissue and can be used to arrest Crohn’s and Parkinson’s diseases, Tibbot says. Donor Services is an 18-year-old nonprofit organization that provides life-saving and life-enhancing donor-tissue services.

Donor Services began its cord-blood program about two years ago. Indiana hospitals, besides Saint Anthony, that offer the service, are in Fort Wayne, South Bend and Noblesville, Tibbot says.

The Saint Anthony effort was sparked two years ago, when Sister M. Aline Shultz, corporate vice president of marketing and public relations for Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services Inc. (parent of Saint Anthony) , inquired of Tibbot.

“We were very pleased to learn, through partnering with Donor Services in this initiative, that we would be supporting so many life-saving services,” Shultz says, adding, “Through the miracle of birth and the generosity of our patients who decide to donate, we are able to be part of this wonderful, life-giving technology that is consistent with our mission and values.”

Donor Services is under the auspices of the National Marrow Donor Program and has been working since December in conjunction with Florida-based Cryobanks International, which coordinates blood processing and distribution.

Four Saint Anthony-based Donor Services technicians will provide the services locally.“We get the word out by leaving pamphlets at doctors’ offices and by talking with moms who come to the hospitals to have their babies,” Tibbot says. “We wait until they get settled in and then ask whether they are willing to participate. We give them time to think about it and 95 percent of the time they say, yes.”

When they hear about the stem cells, they often ask if we are planning to clone their baby. We, of course, tell them, no, and stress that these are not embryonic stem cells.” Cord blood is tested to make certain it is free of communicable diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis and West Nile virus.

A 70-question medical and social history also is compiled on mothers “to make sure for the well-being of the recipients,” Tibbot says.

Cord blood is collected about 15 minutes after a baby is delivered, according to Tibbot. It must be processed within 45 hours after it is retrieved, meaning it must swiftly be transported to the processing facility at Cryobanks in Florida. That agency relates information about its supplies to the National Marrow Donor Program.

Umbilical cord blood donation, which is termed a simple, painless procedure, has been in practice since the 1990s and cord blood stem cells have been used in more than 12,000 stem cell transplants worldwide.

Donor Services of Indiana has done about 1,200 collections, Tibbot says.The survival rate of cord blood transplant patients in the U.S. last year was 78 percent, she adds.

For more information about the program, call Donor Services of Indiana at (877) 749-9105. For more information about The Birth Place at Saint Anthony Medical Center, call Teresa Meece, clinical director, at (219) 755-6331.