High quality cord blood banking is feasible with delayed clamping practices. The eight-year experience and current status of the national Swedish Cord Blood Bank

Abstract

The National Swedish Cord Blood Bank (NS-CBB) is altruistic and publicly funded. Herein we describe the status of the bank and the impact of delayed versus early clamping on cell number and volume. Cord Blood Units (CBUs) were collected at two University Hospitals in Sweden. Collected volume and nucleated cell content (TNC) were investigated in 146 consecutive Cord Blood (CB) collections sampled during the first quarter of 2012 and in 162 consecutive CB collections done in the first quarter of 2013, before and after clamping practices were changed from immediate to late (60 s) clamping. NS-CBB now holds close to 5000 units whereof 30 % are from non-Caucasian or mixed origins. Delayed clamping had no major effect on collection efficiency. The volume collected was slightly reduced (mean difference, 8.1 ml; 95 % CI, 1.3-15.0 ml; p = 0.02), while cell recovery was not (p = 0.1). The proportion of CBUs that met initial total TNC banking criteria was 60 % using a TNC threshold of 12.5 × 10(8), and 47 % using a threshold of 15 × 10(8) for the early clamping group and 52 and 37 % in the late clamping group. Following implementation of delayed clamping practices at NS-CBB; close to 40 % of the collections in the late clamping group still met the high TNC banking threshold and were eligible for banking, implicating that that cord blood banking is feasible with delayed clamping practices.

Keywords: Cord blood; Cord blood bank; Cord clamping; Ethnic minorities; Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.