Spectrum Health is first in West Michigan to offer adult bone marrow transplants

Sharon Hanks

Spectrum Health has earned state approval to perform adult bone marrow transplants in Grand Rapids, the first medical facility in West Michigan to win that status. The approval means that local families no longer have to endure long journeys to visit loved ones involved with the procedure.

Spectrum Health spokesperson Bruce Rossman says the hospital’s Butterworth campus in downtown Grand Rapids expects to perform its first transplant in the next few months, with an anticipation of performing up to 15 transplants in the first year and 30 in year two.

In the past, patients had to travel to the east side of state for the procedure, either to the University of Michigan Cancer Center in Ann Arbor, Henry Ford Hospital in Deaborn or the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University in Detroit, Rossman says.

“We’re very pleased that the state saw a need for an adult bone marrow transplant (approval site) in West Michigan,” Rossman says. Spectrum has been performing the transplant on children for 10 years, most recently at the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in downtown Grand Rapids.

The request was granted by the Michigan Department of Community Health.

According to the Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, bone marrow is the spongy tissue inside bones that can malfunction in patients with leukemia, aplastic anemia, and some immune deficiency diseases. Large doses of chemotherapy or radiation destroy the abnormal stem cells and blood cells but they also kill normal cells. A bone marrow transplant enables physicians to treat these diseases with aggressive chemotherapy and/or radiation by allowing replacement of the diseased or damaged bone marrow after the chemotherapy/radiation treatment.

Since its first successful use in 1968, bone marrow transplants have been used to treat patients diagnosed with leukemia, aplastic anemia, lymphomas such as Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, immune deficiency disorders and some solid tumors such as breast and ovarian cancer.

Sources: Bruce Rossman, Spectrum Health spokesperson, Grand Rapids; Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, NY

Sharon Hanks is innovations and jobs news editor at Rapid Growth Media. Please send story ideas and comments for the column to Sharon at sharon@rapidgrowthmedia.com. She also is owner of The Write Words in Grand Rapids.