VÃctor J Costela RuÃz
University of Granada, Spain
Title: Nursing role in therapeutic phlebotomy in patients with polycythemia vera
Biography
Biography: VÃctor J Costela RuÃz
Abstract
Nowadays, therapeutic phlebotomy (TP) is the first option in polycythemia vera (PV) treatment. It is a technique done by nursing staff with the continuous supervision of a doctor during the procedure. The diagnosis chriteria of PV are an increase in haematocrit more than 45% in men and more than 42% in women, and an level of haemoglobin more than 18.5 g/dL or 16.5g/dL, respectively, as well as an increase of red bloob cell count. The objetive is to determinate the nurse role in the following up of this kind of patients in order to know what are the possible complications related to TP. Be means of literature collection from different clinical database (PubMed, MEDLINE, BioMedCentral); and with keywords: nursing, polycythemia, phlebotomy, therapeutic; it has been collected 20 paperes related to this field. Thus, this group of patientes can develop several events such as those cardiovascular and cerebrovascular, arterial and venous thromboembolism, and hematologic diseases like myelifibrosis and/or acute myeloid leukaemia/mielodisplastic syndrome. It has been found that the main risk in TP along the first 3 years is thrombosis events. In patients with a high risk of thrombosis or those who are not able to tolerate therapeutic phlebotomy, it is used hydroxyurea (oral chemotherapy). Nursing function in this group of patients if highly important in order to detect complications related to TP, giving an important role to the joint medical and nursing approach.