No longer a biological waste product: umbilical cord blood.

Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation is an accepted curative therapy for many cancers and inherited non-malignant diseases, including bone marrow failure syndromes, haemoglobinopathies, and inborn errors of metabolism. Stem cells can be used from the bone marrow or blood of matched siblings or appropriately matched unrelated volunteers, but many patients do not have a suitably matched donor. Umbilical cord blood (UCB) has been successfully used as an alternative stem cell source.

Osteochondroma after total body irradiation: an age-related complication.

Background: The discovery of a mass lesion in a long-term cancer survivor causes significant anxiety. The causes of such a mass include benign osteochondroma, which has been reported following focal irradiation and total body irradiation (TBI).

Procedure: To establish the incidence of osteochondromas following TBI, the medical records of all children treated at the Sydney Children's Hospital who received TBI as part of the conditioning prior to bone-marrow transplantation between 1978 and 1997 were reviewed.

Results of consecutive trials for children newly diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia from the Australian and New Zealand Children's Cancer Study Group.

Despite improvements in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), approximately 50% of children die of the disease. Clinical trials in adult patients with AML indicate that idarubicin may have superior efficacy when compared to daunorubicin in the remission-induction phases of chemotherapy. We conducted consecutive clinical trials in children with newly diagnosed AML in which daunorubicin (group 1, n = 102) or idarubicin (group 2, n = 160) was used during the remission-induction (RI) and the early consolidation phases of chemotherapy.