engleski

Our experience in treating hereditary hemochromatosis: Erythrocytapheresis vs phlebotomy

ackground:Therapeutic phlebotomy (TP), the standard method of treating heredi-tary hemochromatosis (HH) is being partially replaced by erythrocytapheresis (EF)since the introduction of cell separator.Aim:The aim was to retrospectively compare the effectiveness of TP and EF inpatients with HH.Methods: In the period of 4 years (2007–2011.), 29 patients withHH were treated in the Clinical Hospital Centre Zagreb. Twelve patients (10 M, 2 F)were treated with EF and 17 patients (13 M and 4 F) with TP. Therapies wereconducted until ferritin was reduced to<50 ng/l. The hemoglobin and haematocritelevels were checked before each procedure while ferritin was controlled every3 months. EF was conducted by cell separator Haemonetics MCS+with salinevolume replacement.Results:In the TP group 153 venous punctures were made, median 5 (range 1– 25).Patients were treated with a TP for a period of 2–51 months (median 20). TP proce-dure lasted 15 min. (10–30) and 450 ml of whole blood (range 200–500) was col-lected. Before the first TP median ferritin was 1064 ng/ml (range 360–5955) and thefinal was 421 mg/l (range 82–5053). In the EF group 120 EF were done, median 8(range 4–24). Treatment with EF lasted in range of 4–55 months (median 36). EFlasted 35 min (range 26–54), 1075 ml of blood was processed (range 744–1340) and

hemochromatosis, erythrocytapheresis, phlebotomy

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