Courtesy of BrandX Pictures	More NurseWeek Features   Smoke-Free Zone   Nurses and patients tackle nicotine addiction   Bloodless Survival     Surgical techniques to use when transfusion drops out of the equation
Some doctors suggest that within the next five years, stem cells could be used to treat everything from heat disease to diabetes.

When a 45-year-old father's lymphoma relapsed during the holidays several years ago, one of his nurses knew just how lucky he was to receive another chance to live.

It was at least the second time the man's cancer had returned. Had he walked into the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital in Los Angeles 10 years earlier, his odds of survival would have been far lower, said Sosy Keuroghelian, MN, CNS, RN, a bone marrow transplant clinical nurse specialist at Norris.

A decade ago, the man would have required surgery to remove his bone marrow, and then another surgery to have healthy bone marrow transplanted back into his body. His chances of surviving the surgeries and the lengthy recovery process would have been slim, Keuroghelian said.

But with modern technology, the man bypassed the grueling bone marrow procedures and instead received the needed treatment through blood transfusions. He checked out of the hospital just three weeks after the transfusions.

This patient's speedy recovery is largely the fruit of modern discoveries in stem cell research. While stem cell transplantation has benefited patients with diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma for the past several decades, in recent years, researchers have explored new potential treatments for a host of diseases through the use of embryonic stem cells.

Some doctors suggest that within the next five years, stem cells could be used to treat everything from heart disease to diabetes. Nurses such as Lindsay Middleton, RN, a genetic counselor with the urology/oncology branch of the National Institutes of Health, encourages nurses to prepare themselves by taking time to grasp the science that drives this technology.

"Nurses need an understanding of where stem cells are in the body, how they are obtained, how they are manipulated in the lab," Middleton said. "Nurses have always been the basic educators of patients, and in order for nurses to provide the best nursing care, they have to have a good understanding at the scientific level."

Weird science

Doctors first began taking advantage of stem cell treatments in the 1970s, when they started using bone marrow from healthy family members and transplanting it into leukemia patients, said Stephen Forman, MD, director of hematology and marrow transplantation at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. The stem cells in the healthy marrow would multiply and replenish the immune system in the cancer patient.

The next medical leap came when doctors started using the cancer patient's own marrow rather than that of a donor, which lowered the rejection rate. In the 1980s, researchers found another source of stem cells: the umbilical cord blood. This led to the discovery that stem cells in the blood of people of any age could be used for transplantation.

When doctors transplanted a donor's blood-or sometimes the patient's own blood-into a leukemia patient, the stem cells would find their way to the bone marrow and start multiplying. The stem cells would eventually differentiate into platelets, red blood cells or white blood cells.

Next Page