[International bone marrow donor exchange]

More than 200 bone marrow transplants utilizing unrelated donors were done worldwide. In patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia survival rates up to 50% were published. Due to the low number of HLA-A, -B, -DR-typed donors in Europe donor search will be successful in only 13% of patients. Efforts should be directed to make an international donor search easier and to increase the donor pool size in each country.