The authors present the organisation and preliminary experience with a comprehensive autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) program in patients with malignant blood diseases. The procedure involves harvesting of bone marrow from patients in complete remission, purification of mononuclear cells and cryopreservation of these at -196 degrees C. After bone marrow cultures show that a sufficient number of hemopoietic progenitor cells (CFU-GM) are present in the marrow to reconstitute the patient, he/she is conditioned with chemo- (busulphan/cyclophosphamide (Bu + Cy)) or chemo/radiotherapy (total body radiation/cyclophosphamide (TBI + Cy)) in doses equal to those commonly used in allogeneic BMT. From February 1988 to July 1990 bone marrow (BM) was harvested from 24 patients. The median yield of mononuclear cells (MNC) was 1.2 x 10(8)/kg body weight (range 0.55-3.7). After buffy coat preparation, density gradient centrifugation, cryopreservation and thawing out, 0.60 x 10(8) MNC/kg (0.18-3.3) corresponding to 9.3 x 10(4) CFU-GM/kg (2.28-144) could be recovered. Twelve patients have received transplants, five with AML (after Bu + Cy conditioning), six with lymphoblastic lymphoma and one with Hodgkin's disease (with TBI + Cy conditioning). The median number of days to obtain greater than 1.0 x 10(9) leucocytes/l, greater than 0.5 x 10(9) neutrophils/l, greater than 50 x 10(9) thrombocytes/l and last requirement for erythrocyte transfusion were 21 (12-49), 28 (10-60), 55 (21-270) and 55 (12-129) days, respectively. Four patients had sepsis and the median duration of hospitalization was 39 (22-58) days. The most severe complications were seen in the AML patients, two of whom died during the posttransplant period (one of septicemia, one of thrombocytopenic bleeding).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)