How is a match made with a patient?

Which donor is the most suitable is ultimately determined by the patient's treating physician. The most important factor for this determination is your tissue or HLA typing. This must match that of the patient. If you are a (potential) match for a patient, we will contact you. You do not have to do anything yourself. If you do not hear anything, you are not a match.

As soon as someone has registered as a donor, his or her HLA typing (tissue typing) is determined with the swabs. If a patient needs stem cells with that tissue typing, the donor is contacted.

A stem cell transplant only has a chance of success if the tissue typing of the donor and patient are as similar as possible. The donor's stem cells are the source of the white blood cells of the immune system. If they regard the patient's body as foreign, serious and even fatal complications arise.

It is therefore important that the tissue typing of a donor matches a patient as closely as possible. Finding a donor with a suitable tissue typing is called 'matching'.

The most important factors for making a match are: 

  • HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) this is the result of your tissue typing, is the first factor, this must match or be the same as much as possible, preferably we have a 10 out of 10 match. 
  • Age is also an important factor, preference is given to a young donor because the quality of the stem cells is higher and the transplantation in the patient is more often successful. In addition, the chance of risks also increases for the donor as the donor gets older. 
  • Gender is also an important factor. There is a preference for male donors, because they have more stem cells. Women have also often already had a pregnancy, which means that the stem cells are less suitable, which increases the chance of rejection symptoms in the patient. 
  • CMV also known as the cytomegalovirus. We want to know whether the donor has had an infection or not, and is therefore positive or negative for the virus. This is a virus that many people have had without noticing. A patient who has had this and is transplanted with cells from a donor who does not have this, can experience a lot of problems from this, the same but to a lesser extent also applies if a patient has not had the infection and the donor has. 
  • Urgency of the patient is also an important factor in the choices we make. 
  • We also look at factors such as weight, risk behavior, travel history in the past months and availability