Chronic, life-shortening disorder of the bone marrow, involving the tissue producing blood cells. It is primarily characterized by abnormally high numbers of circulating red blood cells.
A chronic disorder of excessive production of red blood cells and hemoglobin concentration.
A disease in which the number of red cells in the blood is greatly increased. There is often also an increase in the numbers of white blood cells and platelets. Symptoms include headache, thromboses, cyanosis, and plethora. Polycythemia vera may be treated by blood-letting, but more severe cases are best treated by radiotherapy. The cause of the disease is not known.
A chronic, life-shortening myeloproliferative disorder resulting from the reproduction of a single stem-cell clone; characterized by proliferation or hyperplasia of all bone marrow cells, with an increase in red blood cell mass and hemoglobin concentration that occurs independently of erythropoietin stimulation.
Polycythemia vera is a condition marked by an abnormally high quantity of red blood cells in the bloodstream, resulting from excessive production by the bone marrow. Symptoms of this condition include headaches, blurred vision, high blood pressure, dizziness, and night sweats.
This is a disease in itself, as opposed to polycythemia, which is merely a symptom of another disorder. Characterized by a well marked and persistent increase in the red cells in the blood due to an excessive production of blood cells by the bone marrow, it is a disease of the second half of life and more common in males than females. Symptoms include nervousness, headache, lack of concentration, vertigo, disturbance of vision, loss of speech, and even paralysis, which may recover completely in a few hours. Itching of the skin, particularly after a hot bath, is common. Other symptoms are loss of weight and strength, shortness of breath on exertion, angina, abdominal pain, and dyspepsia. There is cyanosis of the exposed surfaces, especially the cheeks, tip of the nose, and ears. The facial color varies with the temperature, being scarlet in a warm atmosphere and almost dark blue in cold weather. The eyeballs are often bloodshot and sometimes deep red. The risk to the patient is due to the increased volume, extra density, and sluggish flow of the blood, which may contain from 7 to 14 million red corpuscles per cubic millimeter, as opposed to the normal 4 to 5 million. There may be massive hemorrhages, especially from the stomach, nose, lungs, bowel, womb, bladder, or internally. Treatment is usually begun by removing a pint of blood twice weekly, and it may be necessary to do this for five or six weeks to reduce the level to normal. This level may then be maintained by venesection at longer intervals, or by the use of various agents, such as radioactive phosphorus, which slow up the bone marrow production of red cells. X-ray treatment to the long bones, which contain the bone marrow, may also be used. Also called erythremia, Osler-Vaquez disease, polyglobulism.