Umbilical Cord Blood preservation

[Jhas]

Hi there, My fiance and I are about to have our first child, and we have been told about this process of paying to preserve and store the cord blood for use of the stem cells to help cure our child if (Heaven forbid) a critical illness occurs. It seems like and extremely expensive process (£1000-£2000) and we are really short of money at the money due to redundancies/economy etc. Also we have no idea whether the companies that do it are reputable, and may never know. Does anyone know of a good reliable company or more importantly whether it's even worth doing?
Cheer me dears
Jhas

We used 'cells for life' who were recommended by my independent midwife. However, I don't think you can do it if you have an NHS birth as the midwives need to extract the cord blood immediately after the birth and it can take a while to do so. They are too busy and time pressured. I had an IM at my hospital birth who kindly did the blood collection afterwards.

Like so many other aspects of parenting, its a very personal decision.

Our personal decision was that, if left to its own devices, the blood in the baby/cord/placenta system will mainly wind up in the baby in a pretty small period of time (usually well under 20 minutes) if it is allowed to do so - and that in the baby is where nature intended that blood to be. There is very little research to suggest that allowing that blood into the baby is a bad thing - and an increasing body of evidence to say its beneficial (you can read up on it a bit here - the comments are almost more interesting than the article). Delayed cord clamping (where the cord is not clamped until it has stopped pulsating - at which point most of the blood is in the baby) is becoming more common. If you opt for delayed cord clamping then there is unlikely to be sufficient blood left in the cord for storage.

I do think that cell storage has its place - in particular with families that either have a strong clinical need that will be helped now, or where there is a family history of diseases that can be helped using these cells. However, I also feel that there should be a lot more research into the long term effects of early cord clamping and it offends me that the cell storage companies market by telling parents that if they don't store the blood it goes in the bin - which conveniently ignores the option of letting the blood into the baby.

For us, at this point in time, there was no reason to believe that we would need the cord blood for any reason and so we opted for an immediate and definite benefit for our baby rather than to pay a lot of money to store cells that may (hopefully) never be required. But that was our decision based on our family circumstances and our evaluation of the risk...

re. addictedtofrazzles post, you can collect cord blood if you have an NHS birth, but you'll probably need to arrange for a private phlebotomist to be present at the birth to collect the blood. The cord cell storage company should be able to make suggestions to help you find someone if you need to.

As Tangle say (hi again tangle), there might not be enough blood in the cord. In my first and only hospital birth seven years ago, I had asked for the blood to be collected for the cord blood bank (which means the blood available for anyone who needs it - not just keeping the blood for our child) - but there was not enough blood left in the cord.

Thanks everyone. After careful consideration I think we have decided that if it's even possible to preserve the cord blood we will donate it to the NHS blood fund, as that feels like the right and most ethical thing to do.
Thanks again.

Good on you for deciding to donate.

For what it's worth this is why we decided to keep the cord blood:

The reason for collecting and storing is insurance. Doctors are already using stem cells to cure some really horrible, but very rare diseases, like leukemia. They can be used to treat the child itself in the future or an existing or future sibling.

On the negative side:

• the diseases that are currently cured by stem cells are very rare and your child is highly unlikely to have them in the future.
• there is the possibility that the stem cells will not survive the storage process for more than 10 years.
• there is a chance they will only be able to extract enough cells to treat a child up to about 12 years old and not a fully grown adult.
• it may be that other sources of stem cells (e.g. harvesting from adults) will become more efficient so foetal/cord blood stem cells won't be necessary in the future.

so you may be wasting your money.

On the positive side:

• they are constantly finding new uses for stem cells, and improved storage and extraction techniques.
• if you need the cells and they have been stored you have the option of using them, if you need them and they have been thrown away this option is no longer available.
• there are no risks in extraction - apologies to the earlier posters but personally I haven't come across any studies showing risks from clamping the cord rather than allowing the blood back into the baby.

so the money may be worth paying as an insurance price for a very rare but devastating need. I tend to deal with a lot of medical technology through work (I am a philosopher who specialises in medical ethics) and find that procedures that are considered impossible one moment become reality the very next, so my personal feeling is that the more options one has with stem cells the better.

The company we are using is called Cryo-save. They are based in Belgium but have offices in almost every European country. They send you a collection kit, your doctor or midwife collects moments after the birth and a courrier picks up the package. 24 hours later it's at their lab being tested, if viable the sample is frozen and stored in two separate locations for 20 years, both the mother and the father may apply to have it released. They are the biggest European company of its kind, if you google them you will see case studies of their clients who have had the cells released for treatment.

I just posted this on another thread, it gives an interesting perspective on cord blood collection midwifethinking.com/2011/02/10/cord-blood-collection-confessions-of-a-vampire-midwife/

Thank you for posting this OP. It's such a difficult decision! The one thing that makes me think we'd go for collection is that it seems to me that we had all grown up without extra blood, ie. our cords were clamped straight away. But I don't know!

Booboostoo - if you look at the article I linked to in my original post, it references at least 7 papers that find risks associated with early cord clamping. They do tend to discuss issues with preterm infants - but that seems to be more to do with a lack of literature dealing with the issue in full term infants than because the available information contradicts the point of view. There seem to be many more articles in the literature supporting the view that the default setting should be NOT to clamp the cord immediately.

I can't access this article in completion, but the image shown indicates that in the first 1 to 3 minutes after birth, the new born baby's blood volume increases by nearly 20 ml/kg - i.e. by almost 20%. Would you countenance removing 20% of your baby's blood immediately after birth?

Incidentally, one of the comments below the original article stated that immediate cord clamping was NOT a pre-requisite for cord blood collection and that, in their experience, it was always possible to gain more than the minimum collection volume if the cord was left till it had ceased pulsating. (I had tried to ask one of the companies involved about this issue but never had a reply from them). If this position is correct then the whole discussion becomes moot :).

Thanks Tangle, if I do find something out, will let everyone know (re. collection and immediate clamping).

I really wanted to donate the cord blood but only a very few hospitals do it (without private payment) and mine wasn't one of them - a real shame I think.

I was hoping that you might consider signing my petition to roll out cord donation across the UK? bit.ly/19BII0S