Effect of therapy of blood volume, blood pressure, and spleen size in polycythemia vera.

Abstract

IT HAS LONG been known that marked increases in total blood volume occur in polycythemia vera and that the increase is due primarily to an increase in the total red cell volume.1Relatively little, however, has been written concerning serial determinations of the blood volume, total red cell volume, and plasma volume during therapy of this disease. Brown and Giffin1awere the first to report on this phase; they studied five patients treated with phlebotomy and x-rays, doing two or three determinations on each patient. Later Haden2studied one patient, and shortly thereafter Gibson and associates1breported on a series of three patients studied in a similar manner. Of the nine patients followed by these three groups, eight showed an over-all fall in total red cell volume, associated with a fall in red blood cell count and hemoglobin concentration. The fall in total red cell volume was accompanied with a