In December 2002, a team of doctors from Asian Hospital and Medical Center performed the country’s first bone marrow transplant (BMT). Since then, twenty-eight (28) patients, ages 8 months to 37 years and suffering from life-threatening leukemias and blood disorders, have successfully undergone BMT at our hospital.
Asian Hospital and Medical Center has performed the most number of BMT procedures in the Philippines.
BMT is a hematological medical procedure that involves stem cell transplantation. The stem cells are transfused into a patient after his or her own unhealthy bone marrow has been eliminated. Bone marrow is the tissue in which most blood cells (red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets) are made by the body. Transplantation may be autologous (the patient’s own marrow saved earlier), allogeneic (marrow from someone else), or syngeneic (marrow from an identical twin). Prior to the transfusion, the patient receives high-dose chemotherapy to eradicate his/her defective or cancerous cells. Then, the stem cells are infused—much like a blood transfusion—and find their way to the bone marrow, where they “anchor and divide”, a process doctors call homing. It takes two weeks for the donor stem cells “to take” (engraft). The patient is required to stay in the hospital for six weeks.
BMT can cure both cancerous and non-cancerous blood disorders.
Asian Hospital and Medical Center has a topnotch BMT Team composed of the country’s most respected experts in bone marrow transplantation:
• Dr. Francisco Vicente F. Lopez
Hematology and Medical Oncology
Bone Marrow Transplantation
• Dr. Allan Robert R. Racho
Pediatric Hematologist-Oncologist
• Dr. Salvador Abad Santos
Infectious Disease
For inquiries, please contact the BMT Team at (632) 771-9213 or visit us at the Medical Office Building (MOB) Suite 312.