2012 Volume 1 Issue 2 Pages 52-58
It has been the general consensus in Japan that allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donors should be hospitalized from the beginning of G-CSF administration to the end of harvest for their safety. Consequently, the admission period (about 1 week) is a heavy burden compared to bone marrow donors (3 to 4 days). Since PBSC mobilization and harvest has been successfully implemented in outpatient settings in most other countries, we think it is necessary to establish a system to deal with PBSC donors safely without admission. In Japan, since it came into service, JSHCT obliges all institutes to register all related PBSC donors on the Donor Registry Center preliminarily and it collects all the information about the donors. According to this data, 72 donors in the 25 institutes experienced G-CSF injection and PBSC harvest in outpatient settings. We sent additional questionnaires to these institutes to know the details. As a result, it was made clear that there were no severe adverse health effects, but at the same time many institutes adopted cautious stances toward the outpatient harvest system. It is important to gather these opinions and use the transplant centers' past experiences to make outpatient PBSC harvest safer for donors.
