Autologous peripheral blood stem cell mobilization and apheresis in pediatric patients with cancer: A single-center report of 64 procedures
Abstract
Background
The published experience concerning autologous peripheral blood stem cell collection in children is very limited.
Methods
The data of pediatric patients who underwent autologous stem cell mobilization and apheresis between January 2011 and April 2020 were analyzed retrospectively.
Results
We studied retrospectively 64 mobilization and apheresis procedures in 48 pediatric patients (34 males, 14 females), mean age of 7.31 ± 5.38 (range, 1.5–19.7) years, the underlying disease was mostly neuroblastoma (NBL). The body weight of 21 patients (43.75%) was 15 kg or less. The targeted autologous peripheral stem cell apheresis (APSCA) was successfully achieved in 98% of patients. Neuroblastoma patients were younger than the rest of the patients and underwent apheresis after receiving fewer chemotherapy cycles than others and all of them mobilized within the first session successfully. Plerixafor was added to mobilization in nine heavily pretreated patients (18.7%), median two doses (range, 1–4 doses). 11 patients (22.9%) underwent radiotherapy (RT) before mobilization with doses of median 24 Gy (range, 10.8–54.0 Gy). Patients with RT were older at the time of apheresis and had received more chemotherapy courses than patients without RT. As a result, patients with a history of RT had significantly lower peripheral CD34+ cells and CD34+ yields than those without RT. In 17 patients (35.4%), 22 different complications were noted. The most common complications were catheter-related infections (n:10, 20.8%), followed by catheter-related thrombosis in eight patients (16.7%).
Conclusions
Patients who had far less therapy before apheresis were more likely to mobilize successfully. Our study provides a detailed practice approach including complications during APSCA aiming to increase the success rates of apheresis in transplantation centers.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.
