This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

William H. Crosby, MD

Arch Intern Med. 1978;138(7):1068.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In 1916 a medical student in Prague, Paul Kaznelson, became interested in the problem of thrombocytopenic purpura. He had encountered a patient with this disease, a woman of 36 years who for most of her life had bruised easily and had frequent nosebleeds and copious menstrual bleeding. She had a palpable spleen and a platelet count of 500/cu mm when, on the recommendation of young Kaznelson, Professor Doktor Schloffer performed a splenectomy and cured the purpura. Within four weeks the platelet count was 500,000/cu mm.¹ Four years later the woman was in good health with a normal platelet count. She probably had what we now call immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) and her recovery established splenectomy as an effective treatment for chronic ITP; 80% to 90% of patients with this variety of hypersplenism are cured thereby.

Kaznelson did more than this. Along with Ernst Frank he instigated one of the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation 10666 Torrey Pines Rd La Jolla, CA 92037

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?