ABSTRACT
About one-third of patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy are refractory to standard care, resulting in a high level of disability and a significant economic burden to affected patients and health services. There is lack of universally agreed approaches to the treatment of these patients due to paucity of good quality supportive evidence for alternative therapies.
Based on current evidence, autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is an eye-catching therapeutic option for treatment of refractory patients in whom persistent disability or disease progression outweigh the potential risk of this treatment. No other second-line treatment for this condition has been able to demonstrate an 80% freedom from immunomodulatory therapy with wide ranging improvements in physical, mental and functional parameters.
