ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Saint Louis University Hospital has opened the region’s first outpatient bone marrow transplant program.

The Center for Blood and Marrow Transplantation is located within the St. Louis University Cancer Center on the hospital’s campus. Patients will be treated during the day at the new 16-room outpatient center and go home every evening.

“When you talk to the patients in the hospital itself, one of the things the patients say all the time is ‘I want to go home, I just want to go home’ and, when they’re in the outpatient setting, they’ll be able to go home every single day,” Fran Poaglion, the Administrative Director of Nursing and Oncology, said.

“They’ll be coming back every single day to see the doctor, nurse practitioner, getting infusions, maybe getting blood, and then going to their own home, or into an area close to the hospital, but they don’t have to be in the hospital,” she added. “That’s what’s exciting about it.”

This new outpatient center at Saint Louis University Hospital is only one of five in the nation.