The case of the month
A middle aged gentleman came to Dr. Caire’s clinic concerned about pains in his leg and his back. He also as an aside mentioned that he had had a tooth pulled, and was having a little trouble with it healing. When Dr. Caire looked at his mouth, it was full of blood, and he was bleeding from all his gums, but especially from the hole where his tooth had been before. The legs had purpura covering them. Will Caire did a hemograma and found him to have platelets of 1. The patient was admitted to the hospital and started on a very high dose steroids. Unfortunately there was no response and he continued to bleed.
During the nex blood analysis the platelets registered as “0” despite the steroids. It was at that point that Dr. Caire decided to give the patient a blood transfusion, especially in the light of his continued bleeding and the risk of a spontaneous intra cerebral bleed. Since the missionary had the same blood type as the patient (0+) he donated his own blood to the man. The next morning the patient was completely dry in his mouth without any active bleeding.
