Peripheral blood stem cell collection in elderly patients

Adrian Tempescul (1, 2) , Jean-Christophe Ianotto (1) , Elisabeth Hardy (3) , Francoise Quivoron (3) , Ljubomir Petrov (4) , Christian C. Berthou (1)

1 Department of Clinical Haematology
2 CHU-Brest-Hemato - CHRU Brest - Service d'Hématologie
3 EFS Bretagne
4 Department of Clinical Hematology

Intensive treatments like autologous blood stem cell transplantations are standard consolidation treatments for lymphoma and myeloma in young people. The upper age limit for these procedures is constantly increasing. Instead of studying the impact of aging on harvesting peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC), we performed a retrospective study to explore the feasibility of collecting stem cells from patients older than 65 years and compared the efficacy to harvest in younger patients. During a period of 7 years, we identified 108 patients with myeloma or lymphoma who were older than 65 years who underwent PBSC collection. Only eight patients failed to produce a successful harvest. The majority of patients only needed one apheresis (71%). There was a median number of 5.3 × 10 CD34+ cells/kg. Our study demonstrated that older patients can also undergo PBSC harvests similar to younger patients.

Mots clés: Stem cell harvest; Lymphoma; Myeloma

Adrian Tempescul, Jean-Christophe Ianotto, Elisabeth Hardy, Francoise Quivoron, Ljubomir Petrov, et al.. Peripheral blood stem cell collection in elderly patients. Annals of Hematology, 2009, 89 (3), pp.317-321. ⟨10.1007/s00277-009-0812-9⟩. ⟨hal-00535087⟩