Upon taking the responsible decision to have their baby’s stem cell cord blood collected and preserved at birth, parents should, by this point, have a clear and informed understanding about the health insurance they are gifting their unborn with. They should additionally have a plan of action in place to ensure that the collection successfully takes place during labor and is dispatched with timeliness to their appointed blood bank.

The baby is delivered, the medical practitioner collects the cord blood and the mother’s blood and the courier arrives to take both bloods away. They duly arrive at the cord blood bank and, within no more than 48 hours after labor, preservation is completed. As far as many mums and dads are concerned, it is job done and forgotten about as they embark upon the hard work and joys of new parenthood.

If, however, they failed to skim beneath the surface of the medical science behind the cord blood banking process before the birth, chances are that they will at a later date. There might be no more pertinent a time that they will want to know exactly what happened to the blood cells than if their child develops a disease or illness requiring their usage.

So, what exactly does happen, both to the maternal blood and the all important cord blood that is rich with umbilical cord stem cell properties? First off, the mother’s blood is tested for certain diseases and viruses that can potentially be passed on to her child in the womb. These include CMV, which is herpes related, hepatitis, HIV and HTLV, which is leukemia and lymphoma related. Given the all clear to proceed, skilled medical scientists then go ahead with the separation of the red and white cord blood cells. It is the white ones they are interested in, as these contain the stem cells.

They are then quite simply frozen, using chemicals, equipment and materials that are the most advanced currently available in terms of medical science. Armed with a basic understanding of what the process entails, parents are also entitled to be aware that there is, as yet, no hard and fast proof appertaining to the amount of time during which stored cells taken from cord blood remain medically viable.

At Cryo-Cell Cord Blood Bank, a market leader in the preservation and banking processes, it is believed that cord blood cells are able to remain effective after at least 15 years in storage, as demonstrated by recent research at the University of Indiana. Stem cells extracted from cord blood are a newer and potentially more effective alternative to bone marrow stem cells. It upholds that bone marrow cells are proven to have been stored for decades before being effectively used for medical treatments. No current research has indicated that cells extracted from cord blood will not follow suit.