Specialty emergency medicine ICD-9-CM 999.8 | ICD-10 T80.8 | |
Transfusional hemosiderosis is the accumulation of iron in the liver and heart but also endocrine organs, in patients who receive or did receive frequent blood transfusions (such as those with thalassemia, sickle cell disease, leukemia, aplastic anemia or myelodysplastic syndrome).
Contents
Treatment
Treatment is by phlebotomy, erythrocytapheresis or chelation therapy with iron chelating agents such as deferoxamine, deferiprone or deferasirox. If iron overload has caused end-organ damage, this is generally irreversible and may require transplantation.
Notable patients
Ted DeVita died of transfusional iron overload from too many blood transfusions.
References
Transfusion hemosiderosis Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA