Since less than one-third of patients in need of a BMT find related do
nors, most patients will rely on registries of volunteer donors, For p
atients from minority ethnic groups the chances of finding matched unr
elated donors are lower, in part due to the smaller representation of
minorities in the registries. Our purpose was to determine the represe
ntation of Hispanics in the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), the
largest registry of volunteer marrow donors in the United States, We a
nalyzed a database provided by the NMDP that contained information on
minorities, The number of Hispanic volunteer donors has increased 110-
fold in the last 6 years. The proportion of Hispanics in the registry
has also increased from 1.1% to 6%, Nevertheless, the proportion of Hi
spanic patients that received unrelated marrow transplants facilitated
by the NMDP has increased only from 2.8% to 3.9% since 1989, Only 19.
7% of the formal searches initiated by Hispanic patients resulted in t
ransplants compared to the 30.4% observed in the Caucasian population,
Despite increments in the number and proportion of Hispanic volunteer
donors, the proportion of Hispanics that receive BMT from unrelated d
onors remains low, We conclude that, in addition to increased recruitm
ent efforts, other strategies will be necessary in order to find enoug
h marrow donors to meet the needs of the Hispanic population.