Allogeneic haemopoietic cell transplants in Australia, 1996 - A multicentre retrospective comparison of the use of peripheral blood stem cells with bone marrow

A retrospective comparison was carried out on adult patients receiving HLA- identical allogeneic haemopoietic stem cell transplants from siblings in Au stralia in 1996, comparing bone marrow with G-CSF-mobilised peripheral bloo d stem cells. A total of 131 transplant recipients from nine centres were i ncluded in this study, of whom 79 received bone marrow, 44 blood stem cells and eight both. All but three of the 131 patients had cyclosporin and meth otrexate as graft-versus-host disease prophylaxis. The minimum follow-up ti me for surviving patients is 27 months. Comparisons were carried out betwee n the BM and PBSC groups. There were no significant differences between gro ups in age, sex, diagnosis, donor characteristics or pretransplant conditio ning. Median time to neutrophil recovery of 0.5 x 10(9)/l was 14 days for P BSC recipients, compared to 19 days for marrow recipients (P < 0.0005). Med ian time to platelet recovery of 20 x 10(9)/1 was 17 days for PBSC recipien ts, compared to 28 days for marrow recipients (P < 0.0005). There were no s ignificantly increased risks of either acute or chronic GVHD in the PBSC re cipients. There were no significant differences between the groups in the i ncidence of major transplant-related complications, disease-free survival o r overall survival.