Stem cell storage for new babies
Discussion
I'm about to become a Dad in 4 weeks or so 
. My girlfriend and I are very keen on storing the baby's stem cells in case of future medical issues, and there are several companies offering this service now. We went to the baby show last weekend (yes, I know, I'll head back to Mumsnet in a minute), and found 3 companies promoting themselves, one of which was under the Virgin Healthcare brand.
So, over to PH... does anyone have any first hand experience or know much about this?
It's a fairly pricey thing to do (depending on how you look at it), so keen to hear the opinion of anyone who's done it, researched it, or been on the receiving end of treatments involving stem cells before we sign up.
. My girlfriend and I are very keen on storing the baby's stem cells in case of future medical issues, and there are several companies offering this service now. We went to the baby show last weekend (yes, I know, I'll head back to Mumsnet in a minute), and found 3 companies promoting themselves, one of which was under the Virgin Healthcare brand.So, over to PH... does anyone have any first hand experience or know much about this?
It's a fairly pricey thing to do (depending on how you look at it), so keen to hear the opinion of anyone who's done it, researched it, or been on the receiving end of treatments involving stem cells before we sign up.
We did it with both our kids.
I hope we never need to use them but if we ever do then we at least have a chance - you never know what medicine will be able to do in 10+ years. The upfront cost is pretty high but think about it over 10/25+ years and it doesn't sound too bad. Our consultant told us its very common and its dead simple to do.
We had a shortlist of three companies - Smart Cells, Virgin and another (sorry, can't remember the name). We used Smart Cells for the first and the other one for our second - rationale being that don't put all your egss into the same basket if one company goes bust, etc. The other company also now takes not only blood but a sample of the actual cord.
Not sure if its still the case but we were advised against Virgin - apparenlty they put 50% of the sample into a 'national database' - our consultant told us this may mean you don't have enough for yourself if you really need it. My wife sorted it all out so not sure of the exact details.
If you need anything specific then let me know.
I hope we never need to use them but if we ever do then we at least have a chance - you never know what medicine will be able to do in 10+ years. The upfront cost is pretty high but think about it over 10/25+ years and it doesn't sound too bad. Our consultant told us its very common and its dead simple to do.
We had a shortlist of three companies - Smart Cells, Virgin and another (sorry, can't remember the name). We used Smart Cells for the first and the other one for our second - rationale being that don't put all your egss into the same basket if one company goes bust, etc. The other company also now takes not only blood but a sample of the actual cord.
Not sure if its still the case but we were advised against Virgin - apparenlty they put 50% of the sample into a 'national database' - our consultant told us this may mean you don't have enough for yourself if you really need it. My wife sorted it all out so not sure of the exact details.
If you need anything specific then let me know.
Thanks for the info. We spoke to 3 companies, 2 of them were very similar but Virgin now do two options. Option 1 you kept 100% of the blood for yourself. Option 2 was a bit cheaper but you kept 20% and 80% went into storage where the NHS could request it, so you couldn't guarantee it would be there if you needed it. The idea is that advances in technology are expected to allow you to cultivate more cells from the 20% sample and increase it to something more useable, but this isn't guaranteed of course.
Do you have any links for further reading? I will check the leaflets we took and see if one of them is for the company you mentioned.
Do you have any links for further reading? I will check the leaflets we took and see if one of them is for the company you mentioned.
TallMark said:
Thanks for the info. We spoke to 3 companies, 2 of them were very similar but Virgin now do two options. Option 1 you kept 100% of the blood for yourself. Option 2 was a bit cheaper but you kept 20% and 80% went into storage where the NHS could request it, so you couldn't guarantee it would be there if you needed it. The idea is that advances in technology are expected to allow you to cultivate more cells from the 20% sample and increase it to something more useable, but this isn't guaranteed of course.
Do you have any links for further reading? I will check the leaflets we took and see if one of them is for the company you mentioned.
That sounds familiar. It sounds very selfish but we wanted to make sure we had access to 100% of the sample if needed and so went with the other companies - this was 2 years ago so Virgin have obviously changed their system.Do you have any links for further reading? I will check the leaflets we took and see if one of them is for the company you mentioned.
Will check with the wife what the other company was - she's a doctor so understands all the science behind it and she did a lot of research into both companies. I just think of it as insurance and hope that we never need it but its there if we do.
We had both our kids privately with the same consultant and he is very up to speed with the procedure. Just make sure that your midwife/consultant knows that you want to collect blood and that they know how to do it as it can easily be contaminated if not processed correctly which can make it useless. Thankfully both ours were ok.
Update...
We very nearly cancelled doing this after some further research. My girlfriend, who works for the NHS and is up to speed on medical matters, found that some of the companies may not have been on an "approved collectors" list or something like that. She was extremely worried that come a time we may need to use the sample it may be denied by the hospital because it didn't meet their criteria for collection. Sorry for being vague but she handled all this. However, in the end she found one company who met all the criteria she had read about and we used them 2 weeks ago when my son was born. The Phlebotomist came to the house (home birth), whisked the placenta away and took stem cells and stem cell blood samples, plus a blood same from my girlfriend. A courier comes to collect and a few days later you get a call to confirm that they did indeed harvest enough cells and the blood sample was healthy. The company was Future Health Biobank.
So there you go, if anyone else is thinking of doing the same please feel free to PM me.
We very nearly cancelled doing this after some further research. My girlfriend, who works for the NHS and is up to speed on medical matters, found that some of the companies may not have been on an "approved collectors" list or something like that. She was extremely worried that come a time we may need to use the sample it may be denied by the hospital because it didn't meet their criteria for collection. Sorry for being vague but she handled all this. However, in the end she found one company who met all the criteria she had read about and we used them 2 weeks ago when my son was born. The Phlebotomist came to the house (home birth), whisked the placenta away and took stem cells and stem cell blood samples, plus a blood same from my girlfriend. A courier comes to collect and a few days later you get a call to confirm that they did indeed harvest enough cells and the blood sample was healthy. The company was Future Health Biobank.
So there you go, if anyone else is thinking of doing the same please feel free to PM me.
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