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16. Sometimes a 3-Antigen Match Is Necessary

Sometimes a 3-Antigen Match Is Necessary

 

More than 90 percent of patients can find a haplo-identical donor if they are willing to accept a 3-antigen match. Sometimes this is medically necessary, as when severely ill patients cannot wait the several months it may take to find a 4-, 5-, or 6-antigen matched donor. Patients accepting a 3-antigen haplo-identical match also accept a serious risk of suffering an immune cell attack on their tissues by the transplant (graft vs. host disease), or of having their body reject the transplant (host vs. graft).