Disadvantages of Umbilical Cord Blood Banking

Types

• There are two main types of cord blood banking: public and private. Public banks make cord blood available to any matching recipient and are usually free of cost to the donating family. However, they are often insufficiently funded and may not be available in all areas. As another disadvantage, the donating family becomes anonymous and will most likely not have access to their baby's cord blood if they do ever need it. Saving cord blood in a private bank can be useful for the particular family, but it can be expensive and may limit the amount of cord blood available in public banks for the recipients who need it most.

Misconceptions

• Private cord blood banking companies often market their services as insurance, claiming that if children develop any of a number of medical conditions, their own cord blood can treat them. While this is true in some cases, many cord blood units already contain the same disease that the baby later develops and cannot be used for treatment. In most cases, the best chance for a cord blood transplant comes from a healthy sibling or family member or from a public bank.

Size

• The amount of cord blood collected is small and most units do not contain enough stem cells to be used in a transplant for adults (or anyone over 90 pounds). This limits the possibility that the cord blood could be used in a transplant if the child or a family member needs it later in life. While public cord blood banks routinely discard samples that contain insufficient stem cells, private banks may store them anyway, at the parents' expense. While private banks often use the fact that they discard fewer cord blood units as a positive trait in marketing materials, this may in fact be a disadvantage if they are simply storing unusable cord blood.

Considerations

• One of the most important considerations in deciding to store umbilical cord blood is how likely it is that the family will use it. Estimates for the likelihood of needing a cord blood transplant range from one in a few hundred to one in 200,000, with private cord blood banks generally giving higher odds than independent medical organizations. Since stem cell research is an evolving area, no one can say for certain what the transplant possibilities will be in the future. However, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against private cord blood banking for most families.

Significance

• Most private cord blood banks charge an initial collection and storage fee of several thousand dollars and a yearly storage fee of a hundred dollars or more. Since these costs are generally not covered by any insurance, not all parents can afford to bank their baby's cord blood. While families who have a history of genetic conditions such as childhood leukemia may have good reason to store cord blood privately, those simply seeking biological insurance for their baby may want to consider the cost and the possibility that their child's cord blood may never be usable.