Umbilical Cord Blood Storage and Its Uses

The process of cord blood banking is to collect life-saving stem cells from the umbilical cord and store them to use in the future. Since stem cells are not mature, they can imitate other forms of cells. You think of many things when you become a parent of a new baby. It is wise to store the blood from your newborn’s umbilical cord, which is usually thrown away at birth. Many parents have begun saving it for the future health of their baby. Why shouldn’t you?

Uses of Umbilical Cord Blood

Your baby’s umbilical cord fluid is full of stem cells, which can be handy in the treatment of several diseases, including cancer. These life-saving cells can also help treat anemia and many immune disorders, including those which can disturb your body’s ability to protect itself. Stem cells obtained from the baby’s umbilical blood rarely have any infectious diseases. Adult stem cells usually do not reject them at the time of the treatment.

Umbilical Cord Blood Collection

Umbilical cord blood collection is an easy and painless process and takes a few minutes to complete. The doctor will clamp the umbilical cord in two parts and cuts it to separate the baby from the mother. They then insert a fine needle in the baby’s umbilical cord to collect about 40ml of fluid from it. The umbilical cord fluid process causes no pain or discomfort to the mother or the baby. The doctor seals the blood in a bag and sends it to a cord blood bank for testing and storage.

The cord blood bank may require collecting the mother’s blood for testing purposes. If so, it will send the tubes and banking kit with instructions. 

Cord Blood Storage 

You get two options to store umbilical cord blood. These include public cord banks that offer blood storage for free. They make it available for anyone who needs it as a donation. Some banks also use the donated umbilical cord blood for research. Private cord banks also store the donated blood for the future use of the donor and their family members only. This option can be expensive since these banks charge a processing fee with a yearly fee for storage. Visit lifecells.co.uk for more information