Day #114 - Sickle Cell Anemia

Today we discussed a case of severe sickle cell anemia (previous blog). We spent a lot of time discussing the chronic end organ complications of sickle cell anemia, some of which include:

• CNS
  
  • Stroke and chronic long term sequelae
    
• Cardiac
  
  • Restrictive cardiomyopathy (hemochromotosis)
  • Pulmonary hypertension and cor pulmonale
• Respiratory
  
  • Mixed Restictive/Obstructive lung disease
• GI/Hepatic
  
  • Cirrhosis and portal hypertension (hemochromatosis)
  • Gallstones
• Renal failure
• MSK/Derm
  
  • Avascular necrosis and associated osteoarthritis
  • Bony infarcts
  • Artritis of hemochromatosis
  • Chronic skin ulcers
    
• Infections
  
  • functional asplenia and risk of encapsulated infection
  • Transfusion related -- HIV, HCV, HBV (especially pre-screening)
• Priapism
  
• 
  

•