Question

Jacqueline Dyson is a 66 year old with myelodysplastic syndrome that was diagnosed after some routine bloodwork. Ms. Dyson has arrived in the outpatient clinic for her scheduled red blood cell transfusion therapy. Despite the aggressive therapy, Ms. Dyson finds it difficult to believe that she has a serious illness. She states that she “feels fine” and admits that she doesn’t really understand what the big fuss is about her neutrophils

Answer 1

What Ms.Dones have is myelodysplastic syndrome. It is also called preleukemia. In this condition the body no longer makes enough healthy blood cells. Most people who get it are older than 65 yrs ; rarely young people are affected.

some cases are very mild while others are severe. It also differs from person to person. But in the early stage everything seems to be normal ,I.e., the patient seems asymptomatic. And gradually the patient will start to feel very tired and short of breath develops along with fatigue, easy bruising , paleness, malaise, bleeding ,infection.

The only treatment is red blood cell transfusion or bone marrow transplant but there are various treatment plans to control symptoms, improve quality of life, and have a longer life.

Main reason for her treatment is

• Red blood cells carry the oxygen in the blood. Since her red blood cell count is low or immature red cells are present in her blood stream they are giving red blood cell transfusion. If this is not done then following consequences has to be faced like :
  • hypertrophy of heart due to over pumping as tissues wont get enough oxygen.
  • easy fatigability , breathlessness, recurrent infections.
  • heart failure
• If white blood cells are also affected, initially she won’t have any symptoms but later she’ll start having recurrent infections and may even be bed ridden due to immunocompromised state.
• so it’s best for her to get the treatment before any serious symptoms starts to develop as the saying goes prevention is better than cure but in this case the disease has been already occurred we are secondarily preventing the complications of the disease.