Side Effects, Risks, and Potential Complications of Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Complications can be mild or serious. Sometimes the complications can be treated and other times, the complications can be fatal.  One serious complication of allogeneic transplantation is graft versus host disease. Graft versus host disease  is a condition in which donor cells attack your body tissues.

Graft versus host disease may acute or chronic. Acute graft versus host disease typically occurs in the first three months following transplant but chronic graft versus host disease can occur for up to two years after transplant and the symptoms of chronic graft versus host disease may never go away.  A second complication is graft failure, which occurs when transplanted cells don't produce new blood cells. Other complications of BMT include infertility, early menopause, organ damage and second cancers.

Side effects from the preparative therapy include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, painful mouth sores, hair loss and low blood counts.  Side effects associated with low blood counts include:

• Anemia
• Bleeding
• Infections