Benefits of Simple Exchange Transfusion in Sickle Cell Disease (HbSS) with Vaso-Occlusive Crisis Not Responding to Standard Therapy

Sickle cell disease is an autosomal recessive genetic disease. Vaso occlusive crisis (VOC) is frequently seen in such patients. Painful VOC is usually recurrent, of variable severity due to many factors and its management poses important challenge in the clinical practice. Few patients do not respond to standard therapies and continue to suffer severe pain for prolonged period or land to serious life threatening situation. The red cell exchange by aphaeresis is presumed to be one efficient alternative in this situation which can reduce the level of HbS below 40% - 50%. However, it is costly and not available everywhere. Both circumstances are common in our state where incidence of sickle cell disease is quite high. In such situations simple red cell exchange i.e. removing 1 unit (350 ml) of blood manually (by phlebotomy) and replacement with one unit normal red cell is effective. All of our four cases of SCA with severe acute VOC, are not responding to standard therapy but responded efficiently to this simple red cell exchange transfusion. Our present observation may pave the way of one simple, affordable, and effective measure to reduce the pain of severe acute VOC not responding to standard therapy. Moderate reduction of HbS by 8% - 14% by simple red cell exchange transfusion was associated with relief of pain of acute VOC; a new observation was reported in all our 4 cases which need to be validated by larger controlled studies.