BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTATION FOR SEVERE AP LASTIC-ANEMIA

Severe aplastic anemia is a hematological disease with a high mortalit y rate, for which bone marrow transplantation is the treatment of choi ce, specially in children and young adults. The number of transfusions undergone before the transplant is the most important factor to predi ct the possibility of graft failure. Twenty patients with severe aplas tic anemia, most of them already multiple transfused, were transplante d utilizing cyclophosphamide combined with antilymphocyte globulin as a conditioning regimen. All the evaluable patients engrafted and there were no episodes of graft failure. Three patients died, and 17 (85%) are alive with hematopoietic recovery at a median of 27.7 months post- transplant. Bone marrow transplantation was an excellent therapeutic o ption in this series of patients with severe aplastic anemia and the c onditioning regimen appeared to be sufficiently myeloablative and immu nosuppressive to avoid early or late graft failure.