title: Unrelated umbilical cord blood transplantation as salvage treatment for engraftment failure following autologous stem cell transplantation.
abstract: We report a case of a patient with multiple myeloma and engraftment failure after high-dose therapy with autologous stem cell transplantation. After rescue treatment with G-CSF and back-up reinfusion of autologous stem cells failed, allogeneic umbilical cord blood transplantation resulted in neutrophil engraftment on day +16 and a 57 months lasting complete remission. This case report shows that umbilical cord blood transplantation is a rescue option after engraftment failure of autologous transplantation, which is available for 99% of patients due to the less stringent HLA matching criteria. Moreover, the prompt availability allows transplantation to be performed at an optimal time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Haematology, Oncology and Clinical Immunology, Heinrich-Heine University, Duesseldorf, Germany. fenk@med.uni-duesseldorf.de
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fenk
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Neumann
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fenk
authors.forename: Leilani
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ruf
authors.forename: Fabian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zohren
authors.forename: Nelly-Nancy
authors.initials: NN
authors.lastname: Safaian
authors.forename: Rainer
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kobbe
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005312:Fetal Blood / Q000637:transplantation*; D006084:Graft Rejection; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D016879:Salvage Therapy; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous