Daughter has ITP - Update - Good News (sort of)!

[TheVrolok]

Update in OP - generally good news!

Good stuff. It's just watch and wait essentially.

Good news and positive step in the right direction. Has a cause been identified for the onset of this disease and the production of new platelets?

It's auto-immune.

 

[manimal]

awesome man! Stay strong and positive!

 

[Stopsignhank]

Congrats on the good news. I saw good news because they now know the problem and can fix it and as you said in your OP, it is not one of the horrible diseases.

 

[lxskllr]

Glad to hear the positive news. Hopefully it's just "one of those things" that no one really understands, but works itself out over time.

 

[Rage187]

Nice to hear!

 

[lupi]

One thing I found interesting when looking into child health "problems" is how many occur somewhat often (compare to total born) but are expected to go away. Guess it's the power of youth health allowing a body to adopt and recover.

 

[tortillasoup]

Check for stomach ulcers or the very least get a stool sample to see if she has upper GI track bleeding. If she does have upper gi track bleeding, it could be caused by something like h.pylori which would be unusual but not impossible.

 

[abj13]

Update in OP - generally good news!

:thumbsup:

Check for stomach ulcers or the very least get a stool sample to see if she has upper GI track bleeding. If she does have upper gi track bleeding, it could be caused by something like h.pylori which would be unusual but not impossible.

I wouldn't suggest this at all. Gastric ulcers at age 3 are exceptionally rare, especially H pylori infections (they have significantly decreased in the industrialized world for the past 50 years). The fact that she doesn't have anemia highly suggests against an active bleeding process, especially if it was brisk enough to have a platelet count of 8,000. If this was a bleeding process, she would definitely be anemic and iron deficient at this point. The hematologist would have also noticed a reticulocytosis on the blood smear if there was active bleeding and she was producing enough retics to not be anemic (and even if she was, her MCV would be significantly high, which it isn't). ITP is far more common at this age, her presentation, symptoms, and results are highly supportive of this at this point.

 

[tortillasoup]

:thumbsup:



I wouldn't suggest this at all. Gastric ulcers at age 3 are exceptionally rare, especially H pylori infections (they have significantly decreased in the industrialized world for the past 50 years). The fact that she doesn't have anemia highly suggests against an active bleeding process, especially if it was brisk enough to have a platelet count of 8,000. If this was a bleeding process, she would definitely be anemic and iron deficient at this point. The hematologist would have also noticed a reticulocytosis on the blood smear if there was active bleeding and she was producing enough retics to not be anemic (and even if she was, her MCV would be significantly high, which it isn't). ITP is far more common at this age, her presentation, symptoms, and results are highly supportive of this at this point.

I agree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiopathic_thrombocytopenic_purpura

Two distinct clinical syndromes manifest as an acute condition in children and a chronic condition in adults. The acute form often follows an infection and has a spontaneous resolution within 2 months

So it sounds more likely that some sort of infection caused this and that it should go away.