Therapeutic apheresis experience of our apheresis unit between the years 2010-2015 and clinical and therapeutic characteristics of patients with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP)

Purposes: Apheresis and therapeutic apheresis are used for treatment and supportive care in many different diseases, many disciplines in recent years. In our country there is significant progress in apheresis and therapeutic apheresis about the last 10 years, in our university hospital this process is done more than 25 years. In our study, we aimed to evaluate the diagnostic, clinic and therapeutic outcome of our patients who were treated for different diseases with therapeutic apheresis and Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) . Materials –Methode: 303 patients and 2289 sessions in the field of therapeutic plasma exchange or therapeutic cytapheresis indication at between 2010-2015 were examined at Apheresis Unit of Dicle University Faculty of Medicine. Patients were evaluated retrospectively for gender, age, diagnosis, treatment history, clinic findings, vascular access route, frequency of apheresis procedure and total number of procedure, treatment response, complications developed during the procedure and particularly TTP patients for clinical features and relapse. Result: The most common indication for apheresis with 190 patients (62.7 %)'in the hematology service . Plasmapheresis applied to 110 patients for the highest percentage of patients 22 (20%) with TTP, therapeutic cytapheresis applied to 85 patients, constituted of patients 59 ( 69%) with the acute leukaemias. Two hundered forty four patients of 303 patients that therapeutic apheresis applied were evaluated for response to therapy. (59 patients made that peripheral blood stem cell collection process were excluded from the assessment ) 144 of 303 patients showed complete response (59 %), 17 patients (6 %) showed partial response, 57 (23 %) were unresponsive. Twenty-two patients consisting 12 men and 10 women diagnosed with TTP underwent plasmapheresis are reviewed in this study. The average age was 28,2 ± 8,7 years old (range 18-40 ). Twenty patiens ( 91 %) were considered to be idiopathic TTP, where as 2 patiens (9 %) were accepted as TTP with secondary causes. As a result; 17 of 22 TTP patients showed response (77,2 %), 7 (31,8 %) had a relapse, 4 (18,2%) were unresponsive and died despite the treatment. Conclusion: Therapeutic apheresis is successfully used in our center with high efficacy and low side-effect ratio in the treatment of many diseases. The results of treatment and complications of our center were similar to those of our country and universal literatures.