Therapeutic plateletpheresis (impress your friends with that term!), or TP, is basically a process that "vacuums" out the excess platelets in your blood and returns the blood with more normal platelet numbers to your body. Blood goes out one tube and in another, so it's not the same as a transfusion, in which you get someone else's blood.
TP is not ordered routinely for ET patients, and there isn't a lot of info on it. Johns Hopkins and the Cleveland Clinic both note on their ET info pages that TP is largely an emergency treatment. For example, if you have had a stroke or other severe clotting incident and your platelet counts are over a million, the docs may decide your platelets need to be lowered before a drug like hydroxyurea or anagrelide can get to work on the problem.
According to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, plateletpheresis is the same process blood banks use to collect platelets from donors, and it will take platelet counts down immediately. NORD says that TP has not been studied much in ET patients, though the procedure has been used for decades in emergencies.
Anybody have any experience with this? Please chime in.
Be well!
My name is Patricia with et for many years, am now having a reaction to hydroxarea, am now going to foods to lower platelets anyone have any suggestions.?
ReplyDeleteHi, Patricia, I'm so sorry to hear having problems with hydroxyurea. I know of no foods that will lower platelets. I wrote about it here: ,http://ethrombo.blogspot.com/2016/06/natural-treatments-and-et.html
ReplyDeleteHere are some questions for your doctor: Can you take anagrelide? This is an alternative to hydroxyurea that some people do better with. Can your hydroxyurea dose be lowered to alleviate problems? Do you have JAK2 or CALR mutation? If you have CALR your platelets may run high but you will have less trouble with blood clots, our primary risk, so is anything but aspirin needed? Here's some info in that http://ethrombo.blogspot.com/2015/12/jak-2-or-calr.html
More about how hydroxyurea affect patients is herehttp://ethrombo.blogspot.com/2016/04/what-patients-say-about-hydrea.html
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