Kristie McNealy, MD

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) has issued a new opinion on cord blood banking in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.  While ACOG does not take a position either for or against cord blood banking, it feels that there are certain key points obstetricians should be discussing with their patients.

Initially, cord blood banking was only available in expensive, private storage facilities, but now there is an expanding network of public cord blood banks which are free, and act similarly to blood donor banks.  According to ACOG, all doctors should explain the positive and negative points of both public and private cord blood banking, including any financial ties they have to private cord blood banks.  They should also explain the unknowns of cord blood banking, including the fact that we don’t know how long cord blood can be stored, and that the likelihood of a child using their own banked cord blood is 1 in 2700 or less.

Physicians should also explain that at this point, stem cells in stored cord blood can’t be used to treat genetic or metabolic diseases in the person they were collected from, because these stem cells would contain the same genetic defect they are trying to cure.  Cord blood stem cells can’t be effectively used to treat childhood leukemia in the donor either, because the stem cells would contain the defect that predisposed the child to developing leukemia.

Considering the price and the number of unknowns involved in cord blood banking, we chose not to privately bank cord blood from any of our kids.  We considered public banking, until we found out that the hospital where we were delivering had discontinued public cordblood collection because of the cost and logisitcs involved.

Have any of you chosen to bank your baby’s cord blood?  If so, did you use a private cord blood bank, or did you donate it to a public program?  If you haven’t had kids yet, what’s your stance on cord blood banking? Weigh in in the comments section.