Autologous procedures use a part of a person’s body, such as stem cells, for medical treatment. This includes autologous blood transfusions and stem cell transplants. In some cases, using someone else’s body part or an animal’s may be necessary.
Autologous is usually accompanied by other words such as transplant, graft, or transfusion. The word means from the person’s body or coming from the same body. Essentially an autologous procedure is one where a part of the person’s body, and this could be like tiny stem cells, is used as part of a procedure for that person. It is medicine’s way of using what a person has to fill a medical need.
A very common type of autologous procedure is autologous blood transfusion. For a variety of different conscious or physical reasons, a person may not be able to receive a blood transfusion from someone else. In these cases, before surgery, the person’s blood might be collected or during a surgery or procedure it might be pooled. It is then transfused back into the body as needed.
This method of transfusion may be used when a person seems to reject all other blood types. Alternatively, some people have religious prescriptions against receiving the blood of others. Autologous transfusion could address these situations and make medical treatment possible. This form of transplant can also eliminate concerns about contagion that could be a risk with using someone else’s blood.
Autologous stem cell transplantation is another common form of treatment in certain types of bone marrow or blood cancers. Stem cells are harvested from the patient’s body and reintroduced to particular locations, often in the hope of creating normal bone marrow growth. An advantage of this strategy is that it eliminates the need to find matching donors.
Many surgeries take something from one part of the body and replace it elsewhere. Some plastic surgeries might use part of a bone from somewhere else in the body to restructure or reshape a damaged area. Similarly, skin could be removed from a relatively dark place and grafted onto scarred or damaged areas. This is very common; a simple removal of a mole may require a minor skin graft to minimize scarring.
Sometimes autologous procedures are not safe or possible. In these cases, the medical solution is to get that part or that tiny piece from someone or something else. For example, it is usually impossible to perform an autologous heart valve replacement. Instead surgeons would use a valve on the cadaver of another human (allogeneic) or an animal (xenograft or xenograft). Alternatively, “automated” procedures may not be the best medical choice if a person has health factors that would make it unsafe to commandeer and reuse a particular body part.
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