Successful management of acute bleeding in essential thrombocythemia using automated cell separator

Successful use of the cell separator hemonetics multicomponent collection system+ for therapeutic thrombocytapheresis in a low body weight child of essential thrombocythemia

In children, essential thrombocythemia (ET) is extremely rare with an incidence of 1/million. Since thromboembolic complications are more common than hemorrhagic manifestation, immediate thromboctyapheresis by an automated cell separator can prevent untoward consequences in the form of cerebrovascular, coronary or peripheral vascular occlusive events. Due to varied options of automated cell separators, selecting an appropriate cell separator in such acute emergency situation can be confusing for a treating physician, especially if the patient is a child of low body weight. We present here the successful use of hemonetics multicomponent collection system (MCS+) for therapeutic platelet reduction (TPR) in a 12-year-old male child of 28 kg with extreme thrombocytosis (TS) (3072 × 10⁹/l) due to ET. A total of three procedures were performed without priming of the machine with allogenic blood. We observed hemonetics MCS+, best suited for TPR even in children with low body weight.