Confirmatory typing
After confirmatory typing, you are probably excited to know if you will be called to move forward. So are we!
After the initial briefing and once the health history questionnaire is completed, we will ask you for a blood sample. DKMS will set up a blood draw appointment at a local lab convenient to you. We will mail the lab a kit with all supplies needed so all you have to do is show up! We try our best to have you get to the lab within seven days of contacting you. There is no cost to the donor for this test.
Your blood sample is then used for what is known as confirmatory typing. This means your HLA will be analyzed one more time to confirm you and the patient are indeed a match. The analysis is designed to ensure the safety of the patient and to confirm that you are indeed their "genetic twin." Confirming the patient and donor match is critical to ensuring the patient will not reject the cells.
At the same time, we will check your blood for certain pathogens, such as HIV or hepatitis viruses, so as to rule out any possibility of infectious diseases being transferred to the patient through the transplant.
On occasion, a blood stem cell transplant may be particularly urgent for the patient, or we may already have all of the typing results that we need from you in our database. In such cases, further confirmatory typing will not be required at first and will be carried out instead during the detailed medical examination, which all donors undergo in preparation for a blood stem cell donation. The medical examination also serves as a further precaution to protect your health and is only carried out when we know from our briefing and from your health questionnaire that you are able to donate stem cells and consent to the procedure.
