You must have heard a lot about storing your umbilical cord blood but what does it do? How you can make life safer for your child.
Every expecting parent would do things to ensure safety of their baby’s health. Before bringing baby to their home, they usually do stuff like covering the edges, making hazardous stuff out of their reach, buying a car seat, the height of the crib etc. These things are good to do but are a temporary solution. However, if you want a permanent and secured solution for your baby, then Umbilical Cord Blood Banking is a good option. It is like investing today and reaping benefits tomorrow in critical conditions.
What is Umbilical Cord Blood Banking?
This is a pretty new concept but raging quite rapidly amongst new parents. In this procedure, the stem cells from the umbilical cord is taken and preserved in a blood bank. These cells can later be used in future to treat serious ailments of your family members. These stem cells have the ability to reproduce them and can turn into other type of cells. If anyone in the near family or your own child is suffering from diseases like cancer or skin cell anemia, then injecting these cells will help in generating new healthy cells that can save you from severe diseases like these.
How can it be useful?
Some of known Benefits of Cord Blood are: –
- Stem cells are building block of blood and helps in strengthening the immune system. The ability to transform into any kind of cells; they are very useful in repairing damaged tissues, organs, and blood vessels.
- Since stem cells taken from umbilical cord are immature and not yet familiar with fighting diseased cells, therefore, taking these cells for transfusion is much better because they are less likely to reject the transfusion
- Stem cells are usually used to cure cancer. In case the treatment fails, the doctors use stem cell transfusion. Giving the patient a stem cell transfusion can help in build new immune system, offering a better chance of full recovery.
What parents must know before taking this option?
Though storing stem cells is gaining great popularity, still there is lot of confusion on the subject. As per the experts, the parents must understand that these stem cells can be used to help other patients with transplant or save it for the future. As good as it may sound, but there are few things that need to be considered. There is a cost involved annually to save stem cells. Many hospitals are coming up with affordable plans but it is definitely an additional cost to your yearly expenses. Also, you need to make sure that your hospital is collects cord blood. Again, there are many hospitals today and other dedicated units available that deal only in cord stem cells. Just contact them and they would let you know the complete procedure with charges.
So, if you are mentally and financially prepared, then you must invest in umbilical cord blood bank for securing future health problems.