Emergency Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

Abstract

Clinical Emergencies Presented by Anemia

Tridip Chatterjee and Annesha Das

Anaemia affects 24.8% of the population worldwide. It has wide variety in terms of clinical manifestation of the disease severity. It can also ranges from almost asymptomatic to severe haemolytic anaemia. In contrast to all other nucleated cells, RBCs show very interesting biology. An alteration in any of the major factors in RBCs (eg. shape, size, and structural or functional or quantitional abnormalities in haemoglobin) usually results in compensatory changes in the other compensatory factors. Sometimes, the compensatory responses may fail because of severity of disease or due to underlying pathologic conditions. The result of failed compensatory responses is cellular dysfunction, tissue hypoxia and eventual cell death, which ultimately leads to severity in anaemia and emergency situations due to it. In this paper, we have concentrated to focus on how the extrinsic and intrinsic defects on RBCs cause severe haemolytic anaemia, leading to emergencies. We have also discussed the destructions of RBCs in both extra and intra vascular regions, contributing to severe haemolysis. Other than haemolytic anaemia, other structural and functional defects of haemoglobin, which can lead to life threatening conditions (e.g.: β thalassemia major and transfusion dependent haemoglobinopathies) are also being discussed here. In nutshell, this paper is an exclusive review on all forms of clinical emergencies due to anaemia’s and other haemoglobinopathies.