Is Banking Cord Blood Really Worth It? Scientists Weigh In
If you’ve given birth to a baby, adopted a baby, parented a baby, or just been in close proximity to a baby in the past several years, you’ve likely seen dozens of pamphlets urging you to bank your baby’s cord blood. This blood could one day save your baby’s life, the literature tells you, and isn’t $5,000 or more a small price to pay for that?
These companies, which usually charge $1,500 to $2,000 for collection and $100 to $200 each year for stoarge, prey on young parents’ fears about their fragile baby’s future health. And it does seem like a small price to pay to save your baby’s life. But will it really save your baby’s life?
Finally, the experts weigh in. Lisa Belkin in The New York Times column Motherlode writes about a study reported in this month’s Pediatrics that concluded, as Belkin writes, “that you’d be better off spending your money on onesies.”
The study, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Insistute, found that the odds that your child will actually need her banked cord blood are very small. If a child does need a blood cell transplant, her own cord blood often can’t be used because it would contain the same disease the child is fighting. In those cases, a sibling donor is a better candidate.
Of the thousands of cases of blood cell transfusions reported in the study, only nine used cord blood that was privately (and fortuitously) banked. 36 other cases used privately banked cord blood, but in those cases it was due to a known condition that might require the transfusion at some point.
“Families need to balance the high cost of banking such blood against the remote odds of its ever being needed,” said Dr. Joffe, a pediatric oncologist and senior author of the study. “My personal view and what I think drives the respondents to our survey, is that it’s not worth the cost.”
Instead of private cord blood banking, the study recommends donating to a public bank. However, these banks are few and far between, and donors must deliver at certain participating hospitals.
Did you bank your child’s cord blood? Is $5,000 to $10,000 a small price to pay if your child turns out to be one of the few who can actually use the banked blood?
Photo: The Family Groove
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Donating isn’t as hard as you might think. Even if your hospital doesn’t participate in its own in-house program, you can order a free kit from Cryobanks. All you have to do is fill out the paperwork ahead of time (by 30 weeks or something.) You bring the kit to the hospital, the doctor does the collection and packages it up. The new father (at least, that’s who it was in our case) calls the 800 number and a special FedEx guy comes right to your hospital room to pick it up within hours of delivery.
Donating this way costs you nothing, unless your OB charges you a collection fee, which ours did not.
While the chances that someone in your own family could use your banked cord blood are VERY slim, the chances that someone else out there could use it are much, much higher. Donating is a wonderful alternative that I wish more people knew about. Even my OB never mentioned it to me, although she was more than happy to do the collection when I brought it up. I urge all parents-to-be to take advantage of free donation. Your baby could literally save somebody’s life.
We donated our baby’s cord blood this past December. There is a public cord blood bank here in St Louis (http://www.slcbb.org/). They send you a packet to fill out before delivery and then they send a collection kit to your hospital. The nurses seemed familiar with the donation process and everyone was very supportive. I really hope that our donation was useful!
It’s actually relatively easy to donate to a public cord blood bank – the hard part is finding one. It took a lot of research before my first child, but I found a place that was really easy to use and donated to their public bank for both of my children. If the doctors aren’t able to collect enough for a donation, the blood can still be used for research. I did end up having to pay a collection fee to my doctor with my first delivery, but not the second. Even with that, it was totally worth it to me. All I had to do was fill out a questionnaire, very similar to what you have to fill out to donate blood, and pay for the stamp to mail it back. I was sent a packet including a Fedex envelope and Cryo-bank paid the shipping and even arranged the pick up of the kit at the hospital. All we had to do was call when we went in and call after the delivery. I would have done much more – I consider donating cord blood on the same level as donating regular blood – it might save a life. And if I didn’t donate it, it would have just been incinerated as medical waste. I didn’t want to just throw the cord blood away if it could either be donated to someone in need or be used for research to better the lives of others.
http://www.cryo-intl.com/