[Neil Cuadra]

Originally Posted by donna j.

I was just told by my cancer hospital team that only 30% of people waiting for transplants get matches. Is this true? I was also told that from now to New Year's is a bad time to need a donor as people are busy with holidays? Is this true?

The chances of finding a match are hard to pin down. First of all, people with siblings may find a matched brother or sister, and the more siblings they have the better the chances of a match. For unrelated donors, the chances of finding a match depend mostly on two factors:

• your antigen type (your "human leukocyte antigen", or HLA, type, determined by genes). It's something you inherit from your parents. If yours is a common HLA type then many more people in the bone marrow registry are likely to match you.
  
  
• your ethnic background or race. The bone marrow registries have a much larger percentage of people of European ancestry than from African, Asian, or other ancestries. You are most likely to match somebody from the same ethnic background or genetic family. If your "family" is well-represented in the bone marrow registry your chances of a match are better. If it's underrepresented the opposite is true. This is why there are special bone marrow registry recruitment efforts for minority populations.

Perhaps the statistic you heard is that about 30% of those seeking a donor find a match among their siblings. The other 70% have to look for unrelated donors in the U.S. bone marrow registry or the registries of other countries.

I found out after speaking to someone else, a request for 2 donor matches was made 3 weeks ago, but no response to date, is this typical?

If it's a request to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP, which goes by the name "Be the Match") for preliminary matches then I'm surprised it would take that long. They have databases of about 16 million donors and half a million cord blood units globally so searching them to find potential matches should be a quick computer operation. However, confirming that a potential match is an actual match could be more time-consuming because they may have to contact and do further tests on potentially matched donors. You can read about the overall process here.

I was also told I was 8 of 8, what does that mean? The person giving me the information felt it was a good thing.

That means they are comparing your HLA type to a specific potential donor, and all 8 of the HLA characteristics they compared matched. That is indeed good news and also shows that at least one potential donor has been found.

I suggest that you ask to speak to the person at your treatment center who manages donor searches and coordinates with the NMDP. They should be able to fill you in about where you are in the process of identifying potential matches. The physicians are not the ones who manage the process so you want a more direct source of information.