More than a million stem cell transplants have now taken place, researchers say today.
As many as 53% of these procedures have taken place in Europe – and experts claimed stem cell transplants are still under-used.
By 1995 just 100,000 procedures had been performed since bone marrow transplants were first developed in the late 1950s – but by the end of 2012 another 900,000 had taken place.
In that time donors contributed 22 million samples together with 645,000 products extracted from cord blood.
Procedures have been undertaken at more than 1,500 centres in 75 countries, according to the report in The Lancet Haematology.
According to Professor Dietger Niederwieser, from the University Hospital Leipzig, Germany, in about 30% of cases, patients find a genetically matched donor from their own family.
The report says even in a country like the UK, some 1,800 people are waiting for a stem cell transplant – and 37,000 people are on waiting lists world-wide.
Professor Niederwieser said today: “Patients, many of them children, are facing a life and death situation. Ultimately they will die if they cannot get the treatment they need.
"All countries need to provide adequate infrastructure for patients and donors to make sure that everyone who needs a transplant gets one, rather than the present situation in which access remains restricted to countries and people with sufficient resources.”
One million haemopoietic stem-cell transplants: a retrospective observational study. The Lancet Haematology 27 February 2015 [abstract]
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