AFAIK the bone marrow based procedure requires general anesthesia, with all the risks it entails. Most registries I've seen discourage signing up unless you're willing to do both donations (which I don't quite understand), and this still hasn't changed.
Anyway, my experience was 20+ years ago, so maybe something's changed. I did specifically ask the doctor if this was the same thing they'd do if I was donating marrow and she said 'yes'. My uncle was deeply involved in one of the US marrow-donation registries at the time, and donation shyness has always been a top concern, so I really wanted to be able to give a field report, as it were.
It was in the UK, where (in my experience) they're less likely to offer aenesthesia / sedation than in the US. (I'll tell y'all a funny / embarrassing story to do with that, if anyone asks.)
Maybe enough people were rejecting the marrow donation out of fear of pain that they started offering it? Or maybe the extraction procedure is more invasive in the US than in the UK? Or maybe that doctor was just wrong? We need someone who knows more than I do to settle this!
Yes, I saw this both on the German registry (that lists general anesthesia as the only option for the marrow collection, but 90% of donations are supposed to be stem cell donations from blood) and some English-language one (I think from the UK) and just double-checked the German one. https://www.nmdp.org/get-involved/join-the-registry/donate-b... says 96% of bone marrow donors get general anesthesia.
Both sites I saw also stated that you should only sign up if you're willing to do both, which given the "90% donate stem cells only" number seems extremely odd (I'm sure there are many people willing to donate stem cells while being unwilling to undergo general anesthesia).
Interesting. I'm leaning towards either "doctor was wrong" or "practice has changed". If the latter, then probably to convince more people to go ahead with the procedure.
Certainly 20+ years ago people did refuse un-sedated marrow donations - it was a big problem, with some really sad-story consequences. The pitch at the time was that the level of pain with a donation was equivalent to falling and bruising your tailbone (accurate to my experience), but some people aren't willing to accept (what seems to me to be minimal) personal discomfort in trade for another's life. That makes me sad.
If I were to be lucky enough to be a match I'd also be more concerned about the risk (to me!) of general aenesthesia, than dealing with some minor pain, and elect to do it without.
I agree with you about the "both" requirement, which seems counterproductive. I don't think stem cell donation had even been considered, far less become possible, back when I was more (by proxy) involved in the space.
