Haematology

After more than 30 years of continuous development and growth, the Department of Hematology of Beijing Friendship Hospital has become a department with a complete talent structure, advanced instruments and equipment, and a relatively high level of medical care and scientific research. It is now a key department in Beijing Municipality and a major member of the Beijing Bone Marrow Transplantation Collaboration Group. It has 31 beds, including 2 class-100 purified laminar-flow beds, 4 simple laminar-flow beds, and 25 regular beds. Its medical and nursing staff number 32, including 12 physicians and 20 nurses; 6 hold master's degrees and 3 hold doctoral degrees, including 1 chief physician and 3 associate chief physicians. The department undertakes medical, research, and teaching duties.

As a clinical department, our department can currently diagnose and treat many hematologic diseases, principally leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, and thrombocytopenic purpura, among others, and its diagnostic and treatment methods are at an advanced level in China. It has also successfully performed autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, providing more treatment options for patients with hematologic malignancies, and was the first to successfully perform haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation combined with umbilical cord blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In December 2007, our department was formally approved as a designated hospital for the collection and transplantation of unrelated allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells.

While rapidly improving its clinical services, our department has also vigorously developed its laboratory facilities. At present, the blood-cell separation room established by our department can perform such procedures as plasma exchange, cell separation, and stem-cell collection. The laboratory can perform stem-cell cryopreservation and thawing, flow-cytometric testing of stem cells, colony culture, drug-sensitivity testing, and other procedures. In addition, our department has actively carried out leukemia fusion-gene testing, making leukemia diagnosis precise at the molecular-biology level; this has direct significance for guiding clinical treatment and is conducive to evaluating treatment efficacy.

Research mainly focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of hematologic diseases and on issues related to hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and graft-versus-host disease. It currently undertakes 7 research projects; these are progressing smoothly, and some have already been applied clinically and achieved initially favorable therapeutic results. In addition, our department undertakes the undergraduate and graduate teaching work of Capital Medical University.

With the support and care of leaders at all levels of the hospital, the Department of Hematology continues to make progress. All department personnel will continue to uphold the hospital motto “Benevolence, Excellence, and Precision”, with full confidence, pioneering and innovating, keeping pace with the times, and working together with sister departments to create an even better future.

Specialty of the Department of Hematology: Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Since our department began performing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in 1996, it has successfully completed more than 100 cases of autologous and allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HLA-matched and HLA-haploidentical), providing more treatment options for patients with hematologic malignancies. Through clinical exploration, our department has absorbed advanced transplantation experience and lessons from China and abroad and developed a distinctive treatment system. Its transplantation level is at the leading level in China, and the long-term post-transplant survival rate of patients in the stable phase reaches 87.5%. It has 6 laminar-flow wards equipped with a patient call system, ECG monitors, electric suction devices, and oxygen-supply facilities. It has the capability to test, culture, collect, separate, and cryopreserve hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells; it can perform HLA tissue-typing tests and has quality-control and quality-assessment measures. It has a 28m2 hematopoietic stem cell collection work area equipped with a collection bed and a blood-cell separator. It has 7 licensed physicians meeting the technical requirements for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation-related work (3 associate chief physicians, 1 attending physician, and 3 resident physicians), 6 nurse practitioners, and 1 medical technician. Our department's transplantation work passed the acceptance inspection for a Beijing medical-insurance-designated hospital for allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in July 2007. In December 2007, our department was formally approved as a designated hospital for the collection and transplantation of unrelated allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells.

Treatment of Hematologic System Diseases

For many years, our department has conducted the diagnosis and treatment of various hematologic diseases, mainly leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, and thrombocytopenic purpura, among others, accumulating extensive clinical experience and mastering advanced and effective diagnostic and treatment techniques. Chemotherapy, biological therapy, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation have markedly increased the complete-remission rates for patients newly treated for various acute and chronic leukemias, and some patients have achieved long-term disease-free survival. Long-term clinical practice and accumulated technical experience have enabled the department to develop a complete set of effective diagnostic and treatment measures for various malignant lymphomas and multiple myeloma; some patients with relapsed or refractory disease can also achieve remission and long-term survival. Treatment of other hematologic diseases, such as aplastic anemia and bleeding disorders, has also achieved very good results. Moreover, some difficult and miscellaneous diseases that had remained undiagnosed for a long time, such as hemophagocytic syndrome, Langerhans syndrome, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, eosinophilia, and Castleman disease, among others, have also received timely diagnosis and treatment in our department.