After the donation
Following your stem cell donation, you may be wondering what happens next:
What happens next?
Following your stem cell donation, we will monitor your health through our follow-up programme. We will contact you at specific intervals as outlined below:
Same week as your donation: We will call you within a few days of your donation to confirm that you are doing well.
After 1 month: You will receive an email asking you to complete a short medical questionnaire, and we will provide a letter for your GP to arrange a blood test. The blood test is optional, but we recommend you have it to ensure your blood values have returned to normal. If you need any support with this, please let us know.
After 6 months: You will receive an email from us with a short medical questionnaire to complete.
After 1 year and then every year for 10 years: You will receive an email from us with a short medical questionnaire to complete.
Once you have donated, our Follow-Up Team is on hand to guide you through the next steps after stem cell donation. You can read more in our handbook.
Sharing your experience online
Sharing your experience as a stem cell donor is an amazing way to motivate even more people and empower them to become potential lifesavers.
If you want to share your story, we would love to hear from you.
For data protection reasons, it is very important that you avoid giving certain information about your donation or references to the patient. This is the only way we can protect the privacy of both patients and donors. We have created a handy social media guide for DKMS donors with tips and guidance on how to go about sharing your story.
If you would like us to support you in publishing your donor experience, please get in touch.
If you no longer want to participate in the follow-up programme
If you no longer wish to participate in the follow-up programme, either note this on the next health questionnaire, or contact the follow up team.
- By phone: 020 8747 5660
- Or by email: followup@dkms.org.uk
Protecting your health after your donation
The wellbeing of the donors is top priority at DKMS and we follow the general prescribed standards for follow-up of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA).
We contact donors annually so that we can be kept up to date with any health changes, as some health conditions may effect a donors eligibility to donate again.
Very rarely, some donors may have health changes that may affect the recipients treatment. In such cases, a member of the follow up team will be in contact to ask some further questions.
After a stem cell donation, the body regenerates the stem cells within a few weeks. The follow-up programme includes a blood values test four weeks after donation to make sure that the relevant blood values have returned to normal.
Only if a blood value needs to be rechecked will we ask for additional blood tests.
After your donation, the follow up will explain the reservation process and together, we will decide what happens next.
The majority of donors are temporarily reserved on the stem cell register for a period of two years, remaining committed to the patient they’ve donated to. This means they will not be matched with any other patients during this time.
In rare cases, the patient may require an additional donation. If this happens, we will reach out to the donor.
Please note, an additional donation is entirely voluntary.
If you are identified as a potential blood stem cell match for someone, we ask that you do not donate blood from the time of confirmatory typing. Your confirmatory typing will take place after you are identified as a potential donor.
Following your donation, we ask you not to donate blood until six months after a peripheral blood stem cell donation and 12 months after a bone marrow donation.
