A transplant allows you to have much higher doses of chemotherapy than usual, which may help to improve the chances of curing some types of cancer, leukaemia or lymphoma, or prolonging a remission. Remission is where there is no sign of the cancer.
Very high doses of chemotherapy, sometimes with radiotherapy, are usually given over a few days. The high-dose treatment destroys the bone marrow and stem cells. So, after the high-dose treatment you will be given a drip (infusion) of either:
- your own stem cells (autologous treatment)
- or stem cells from a donor (allogeneic transplant).
Both of these procedures are often called transplants. But, strictly speaking, only situations where stem cells are taken from someone else are actually transplants. So, throughout this section, the term high-dose treatment with stem cell support is used, rather than autologous treatment.
High-dose treatment with stem cell support, and allogeneic transplants are different treatments, with different risks and possible side effects.