Word: hematocrit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From the Marrow. For at least two years, Mrs. Roosevelt had been anemic. Doctors established that her bone marrow was not producing enough blood cells, but why this was they had no idea. Each time her hemoglobin and hematocrit (red-cell concentration) readings fell alarmingly low, a blood transfusion lifted them above the danger level. Early this year, she was put on a regular dosage of cortisone-type hormones. This treatment carried the risk of reducing her resistance to infections. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Roosevelt began to run a fever. Nobody knew what was causing it. The common everyday infections, from...
...their theory was difficult because the blood's viscosity is not uniform in any one patient at any one moment : it probably hits momentary peaks in the coronary arteries, where it cannot be measured directly. As a guide to viscosity, Drs. Burch and DePasquale took readings with a hematocrit - an instrument that measures the concentration of red cells in a centrifuged blood sample. The normal range is 40% to 50%. Most of their heart-disease patients had readings of up to 56%. Patient after patient obtained relief from repeated angina attacks, which cause fierce pain in the chest...
Incidental support for the doctors' theory came from a woman who had had frequent angina attacks, but got complete relief after she suffered an internal hemorrhage which dropped her hematocrit reading to 26%. She asked spontaneously: "Was that bleeding good for me?'' Drs. Burch and DePasquale think it was. Also, they argue, the relative freedom from angina and coronary disease enjoyed by women of menstruating age probably reflects the fact that their hematocrits read around 40%. After the menopause, women's hematocrits go up; so does their susceptibility to coronary disease and angina...
This type of heart disease is rare, the doctors note, where malnutrition and parasitic infestations cause anemia and keep the hematocrit scores down. It is common est among well-fed, "redblooded" peoples. Bleeding in moderation to cut the hematocrit score to a safe reading between 40% and 45%, the Tulane doctors suggest, may well be one answer...