Aplastic Anemia -Treatment & Prognosis
Treatment & Prognosis
Aplastic anemia treatment mainly includes medications and multiple blood transfusions.
Mild or moderate aplastic anemia, is usually not life-threatening in which case the patient is not hospitalized. Severe AA, on the other hand, is life threatening and may therefore, require hospitalization.
Aplastic anemia treatments mainly include medications and multiple blood transfusions.
Blood transfusions merely relieve the signs and symptoms by supplying the blood cells that the body is lacking and cannot induce a complete cure.
Blood transfusions are not without their side effects such as iron overload or antibody production against transfused cells.
In severe cases, bone marrow transplantation (BMT) may be required. Here the non-functional BM from AA patient is destroyed using radiation or chemotherapy and is then replaced with BM, extracted through surgical means, from a matched donor, preferably a sibling. The donor's bone marrow (BM) is intravenously injected into the patient's blood where it migrates to the BM cavities(5✔).
This procedure too has its risk as the body may reject the bone marrow and this in turn can lead to life-threatening complications.
Immunosuppressant Drugs such as cyclosporine (Gengraf, Neoral, Sandimmune) and anti-thymocyte globulin (Thymoglobulin) are often used to treat AA, especially in the case of autoimmune AA.
Corticosteroids, such as methylprednisolone are also given along with immunosuppressants.
Bone marrow stimulants such as filgrastim (Neupogen) and epoetin alfa (Epogen, Procrit) are administered to stimulate the bone marrow to grow new blood cells.
Antibiotics, antivirals are also used in AA treatment.
Aplastic anemia caused by cancer treatment, pregnancy or other drugs is usually short term and the patient can return to normalcy.
If all treatments remain ineffective, aplastic anemia can be fatal.
References:
- Aplastic Anemia. - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6467577/)
- Effective treatment of aplastic anemia secondary to chemoradiotherapy using cyclosporine A. - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8509938/)
- Management of aplastic anemia in a woman during pregnancy: a case report. - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048477/)
- Aplastic Anemia. - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534212/)
- Diagnosis and Treatment of Aplastic Anemia. - (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29143887/)
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