Why bone marrow transplants are becoming less common

Blood stem cell transplants have been central players in treating blood cancers for decades. These procedures can improve patients’ chances of survival and can even offer the opportunity for a cure in some cases. But over the last decade, physicians say they’ve started doing transplants for fewer cancer types, particularly lymphomas, and are instead reaching first for newer immune or targeted therapies that are safer and often more effective.

That’s progress that experts hope will continue. “I know from my days as a transplanter, there was nothing better than when a patient didn’t have to be transplanted,” said Andy Kolb, the president and CEO of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “Because it’s toxic.”

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