Mikuláš Hrubiško, Miroslav Kubeš, Richard Ištok, Marina Polonská, Martina Stuchlíková, Zohdy Hamid
After the first cord blood (CB) transplantation in 1988 CB has become an equal source of blood stem cells (BSC) for transplantation together with bone marrow and peripheral blood. First CB transplantations were performed within the family, when the CB harvested at the birth of a younger sibling has been used for transplantation of an elder one suffering from a disease, which could be cured by BSC transplantation. First public cord blood bank has been established in 1991 at the New York Blood Centre and since then the number of public cord blood banks has reached more than 100 and the number of CB units stored has exceeded 500 000 what enabled to perform more than 25 000 transplantation. In Slovakia, cord blood has been harvested since 1996 and the mixed – public/private – cord blood bank has been working since the year 1999. The total number of Slovak CB units released for transplantation has reached 29.