What is a Cord Blood Bank Quality Guarantee?
While searching for the right cord blood bank for your family, you’ve likely come across something called a “quality guarantee." Americord is proud to display our best-in-industry guarantee and encourage you to keep this in mind when making your decision about which bank to use. But you might still have some questions about what exactly a quality guarantee is in the context of cord blood banking, or why a higher guarantee could actually benefit your family.
The Basics
A cord blood banking quality guarantee is a promise to help you pay for another source of stem cells in the event that the cord blood stem cells you choose to bank are ever needed for medical treatment, but fail to engraft.
What is Engraftment?
Engraftment is the process by which the transplanted stem cells travel through the blood stream to the bone marrow, where they can begin making new red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets that the body needs in order to overcome the illness. This is the process that allows cord blood stem cells to treat close to 100 conditions, like leukemias and lymphomas. It is important to understand that this is not an instant process – according to the National Cancer Institute1, it can take two to four weeks.
Americord takes every step possible to ensure that the cord blood stem cells you bank with us will be as healthy and viable as possible for use if they should ever be needed. Our proprietary Cord Blood 2.0® processing method is highly adaptable, meaning every collection of cord blood can achieve the highest stored stem cell yield possible.
The greater number of stem cells available to doctors, the greater the treatment possibilities. But these stem cells are only useful if they remain healthy through the freezing and thawing process, so we also use the highest-performing – and most expensive – cryoprotectant, the solution that protects the cells while they are freezing and thawing. The entire process is also monitored by a highly-trained technician from start-to-finish.
The Cord Blood 2.0 method has been highly successful – every single sample of cord blood stem cells that we have released to our clients for treatment has successfully engrafted. However, as there is always a small chance the released stem cells will not engraft, we are proud to offer the industry’s highest quality guarantee.
The Quality Guarantee
Our quality guarantee of $110,000 is the highest in the industry. In the event that your banked stem cells are required for treatment, but do not engraft for any reason, we will help facilitate access to new stem cells from a donor source.
Finding new stem cells that are a match to your child entails a search through public cord blood banks, which operate from donated cord blood stem cells. However, there is a substantial fee to have these samples released, as these banks sustain their operating costs through fees on donated cord blood. With the addition of transportation costs, this can become a substantial burden for a family, especially if another bank’s quality guarantee is too low to cover all potential costs.
Our $110,000 quality guarantee is intended to keep your out-of-pocket costs associated with finding a new source of stem cells as low as possible. We want you to feel confident in your decision to bank your newborn’s stem cells with us.
If you have further questions about the Americord quality guarantee, or about any of our stem cell banking options, please do not hesitate to reach out. We’re always happy to help.
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