ST. LOUIS Local cancer patients who need bone marrow transplants could soon have the option of sleeping in their own beds instead of staying in the hospital for weeks or months.

The region's first outpatient bone marrow transplant center is set to open later this month at St. Louis University Hospital.

Bone marrow transplants are most commonly used for certain patients with cancers of the blood including leukemia and lymphoma. Stem cells from bone marrow harvested from the patient or a donor are transplanted into the patient's bloodstream to replace diseased cells. Patients require chemotherapy before the transplant to kill the cancer cells, and antibiotics, blood transfusions and daily monitoring afterward.

Historically, patients were hospitalized up to two months or longer because side effects from the transplant can be life-threatening. In an effort to reduce costs of the transplant, which can reach several hundred thousand dollars, several U.S. cancer centers in the last 20 years pursued an outpatient option.

Since then, research published in the journal Nature has shown that infection rates and outcomes do not vary significantly if they are treated as inpatients or outpatients.

"We have patients who really don't need to be (in the hospital), they're as bored as can be," said Fran Poglajen, administrative director of nursing for hematology/oncology at SLU.

Stronger patients at low risk of transplant rejection will now have the option of going home each night, as long as they have a caregiver available 24 hours a day. If they develop a fever or other complications, they need to be admitted to the hospital.

The outpatient treatments can last two to 10 hours and are given each day for about a month.

The $3 million center at SLU Hospital includes 16 rooms in about 10,000 square feet. It was built on the site of the operating rooms of the former Bethesda Hospital. About 10 new jobs were created with the opening, and within a few years about 100 patients a year are expected to receive transplants there.

"Bone marrow transplant really has revolutionized treatment of malignant blood diseases," said Dr. Friedrich Schuening, SLU's director of hematology and oncology. Schuening ran the inpatient/outpatient bone marrow transplant center at Vanderbilt University before coming to St. Louis last year.

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SLU to open outpatient bone marrow transplant center

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