Mayo Clinic and Phoenix Children's Hospital to Host 'Marrowthon'

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — You could very well Be the Match. That is, by showing up for the bone marrow screening drive hosted by the Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT) Program at Mayo Clinic and Phoenix Children's Hospital from June 16-19, you could potentially be a match for a person in need of life-saving blood cells.

This is a chance for members of the community, as well as employees at Mayo Clinic and Phoenix Children's Hospital, to give the gift of life by being part of the Be The Match MARROWTHON Donor Recruitment Campaign.

The drive will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16, at Mayo Clinic, 13400 E. Shea Blvd., Scottsdale, in the Taylor Auditorium on the Concourse level. On Wednesday, June 17, the drive will take place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mayo Clinic Hospital, 5777 E. Mayo Boulevard, Phoenix, in Conference Room 1-212 on the first floor.

The event will continue from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, June 18, at Phoenix Children's Hospital, 1919 E. Thomas Road, Phoenix, in the front lobby of building A. It will continue again from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, June 19, at the same location at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

People age 18 to 60 in generally good health are encouraged to attend the drive and fill out paperwork. Then a small swab of cheek cells is taken with a cotton swab to determine tissue type to be a potential match for patients in need of a donor. No extraction of blood or marrow takes place at the screening — just the cheek swab. Test results are added to the Registry.

According to the Be The Match Marrow Registry, each year more than 10,000 men, women and children contract life-threatening diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma and do not have a matching marrow donor in their family. They need to find an unrelated marrow donor whose tissue type matches their own.

For more information about the Marrow Donor Recruitment Program, call 480-342-0290 at Mayo and 602-546-0824 at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

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Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. As a leading academic medical center in the Southwest, Mayo Clinic focuses on providing specialty and surgical care in more than 65 disciplines at its outpatient facility in north Scottsdale and at Mayo Clinic Hospital. The 244-licensed bed hospital is located at 56th Street and Mayo Boulevard (north of Bell Road) in northeast Phoenix, and provides inpatient care to support the medical and surgical specialties of the clinic, which is located at 134th Street and Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale.

Phoenix Children's Hospital is Arizona's only licensed children's hospital, providing world-class care in more than 40 pediatric specialties to our state's sickest kids. Though Phoenix Children's is one of the ten largest freestanding children's hospitals in the country, rapid population growth in Arizona means the Hospital must grow as well. Phoenix Children's recently announced a $588 million expansion plan to bring its special brand of family-centered care to even more patients and families. The plan includes a significant upgrade of the Hospital's current campus, an aggressive physician recruitment effort, and new satellite centers in high growth areas of the Valley. For more information, visit the Hospital's Web site.

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About Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy of "the needs of the patient come first." More than 3,700 physicians, scientists and researchers and 50,100 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has sites in Rochester, Minn; Jacksonville, Fla; and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz. and community based providers in more than 70 locations in Southern Minn., Western Wis. and Northeast Iowa. These locations treat more than half a million people each year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to www.mayoclinic.org/news. For information about research and education, visit www.mayo.edu. MayoClinic.com is available as a resource for your health stories.