Cord support programme advice and training services

About our services

Support and advice

• Shortlisting: we list up to 10 of the best, optimal units for patients (as per BSHI Guidelines Little et al, 2021). Considering not only cell dose and HLA match grades, but many important factors including RBC reduction, Cord Bank accreditation, unidirectional mismatches, donor specific antibodies and more.
• Optional Available Cords: help in identifying alternative ‘back-up’ cords when needed, for example in an urgent patient case. We can provide information on units which could ship quickly and/or may have already had pre-release testing completed, if available.
• Cord Blood Unit Quality Checklists: our checklists, completed for all cord blood unit reports requested by UK Transplant Centres, help to standardise unit report data, point out missing and/or alarming data points early in the search process, and provide interpretation of data points against Human Tissue Authority requirements and FACT-Netcord guidance.
• Post-Thaw Clinic: data interpretation for post-thaw data received about any cord blood unit. Our panel of five expert bankers from Anthony Nolan and NHSBT Cord Blood Banks will interpret the results and give their opinions on “what good looks like”.
• Ask an Expert Transplanter: help with clinical queries relating to cord blood unit transplantation e.g. patient management post-transplant or using cord blood for a particular indication. Our panel of three transplanter from UK Transplant Centres who utilise a lot of CBUs use their experience to give their opinion on your query.

Training

• Bespoke On-site or On-line training sessions: we can offer bespoke sessions tailored to your training/educational needs either on-site or on-line. We can do full day, half day or one-off sessions and tailor it to your audience e.g. H&I professionals, clinical teams, CNSs and ward staff, transplant coordinators or a combination of everyone involved in UCBT.
• On-site assistance / troubleshooting help: we can also, upon request, attend your centre on the day of infusion for troubleshooting support, or even to bring some ‘dummy’ cord bags with us for practicing spiking in before the real CBU is thawed!