REPORT FROM:

Baylor College of Medicine

“It was very lucky for us – although not for Louisiana – that the storm veered east at the last minute,” said Dr. Helen Heslop of the Stem Cell Transplant Program at Baylor College of Medicine.

“Both our clinical units at Texas Children's Hospital and The Methodist Hospital were fine and never lost power, and the GMP facility also is fine and has enough liquid nitrogen for a week.  We have gone back to regular coverage for the units,” she said.

“It is actually a clear, fine day here today [Sunday], although the city is still deserted.  There are no open gas stations.  The few open supermarkets have queues to get in, and about 500,000 people are still without power.”

Dr. Heslop said that she wanted to commend the accomplishments of Dr. George Carrum, collection center medical director, and Marsha Cohen, the RN coordinator, as well as the NMDP staff for getting all of their donor products out before the storm.  “We had four collections for other NMDP centers during the week before the storm at our adult unit at The Methodist Hospital, and donors postponed their evacuation plans so they could donate the cells,” she said.

Some in-patients were released well in advance of the storm or transferred to other facilities out of town, but about 25 patients remained in the BMT unit.  Included among the 25 were three who were evacuated from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

The BMT unit had five attending physicians who stayed with the patients through the storm, two in the unit throughout the night.
 
“Please thank all the transplanters who contacted us to offer help with our patients if it was necessary,” Dr. Heslop said.

Updated 10/2/05