Key-note lecture: Twenty five years of bone marrow transplantation in Poland

The first allogeneic bone marrow transplantation in Poland was performed in November, 28, 1984. Patient was 6 year old girl with Diamond-Blackfan anemia (inherited absence of red cells) following 60 transfusions with significant hemosiderosis conditioned with busulfan and cyclophosphamide. Donor was her 4-yr old HLA-identical sister. The entire technology was reinvented in Poland partially with help of published evidence and none of the team members has received training in that area abroad. Transplantation was successful and the patient is alive and well in 2009. It was also the 2nd successful transplantation in this disease in the world. The same team of Military School of Medicine in
Warsaw has performed in subsequent two years additional 8 allogeneic transplantations exclusively in patients with advanced diseases, has achieved engraftment in 6 cases and long term survival (ongoing) in 2 cases (one more with Diamond-Blackfan anemia and one with accelerated phase of chronic myelocytic leukemia). In 1985 the same team has performed the first autologous transplantation in a case of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In 1987 team was dissolved by administrative decision but was able to publish detailed transplantation protocol that has allowed other Polish teams to continue this task. The next team has started activity in Wroclaw in 1989, followed by the teams in Poznan and Katowice in 1990 and 1991 respectively. This last team has performed the first allogeneic transplantation from unrelated donor in 1997. Currently, in Poland they are 17 active transplantation teams performing yearly approximately 800 transplantations including 500 autologous and 300 allogeneic, half of them from unrelated do- nors. As based on EBMT data the results of these transplantations are similar to transplantations performed in Western European Centers.

Keywords: Rational drug use, adverse drug effects( ADE), generic drugs, medication profile, Transplantation, Diamond-Blackfan anemia