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[Ancient] Thoughts on Japanese Bloodletting

November 26, 2011 11:47 AM

Therapeutically Withdrawing Blood

According to Wikipedia, Bloodletting (or blood-letting) is the withdrawal of often little quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease. Bloodletting was based on an ancient system of medicine in which blood and other bodily fluid were considered to be “humors” the proper balance of which maintained health. It was the most common medical practice performed by doctors from antiquity up to the late 19th century, a time span of almost 2,000 years.

The practice has now been abandoned for all except a few very specific conditions. It is conceivable that historically, in the absence of other treatments for hypertension, bloodletting could sometimes have had a beneficial effect in temporarily reducing blood pressure by a reduction in blood volume. However, since hypertension is very often asymptomatic and thus undiagnosable without modern methods, this effect was unintentional. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.

Today, the term phlebotomy refers to the drawing of blood for laboratory analysis or transfusion. Therapeutic phlebotomy refers to the drawing of a unit of blood in specific cases like hemochromatosis or porphyria cutanea tarda, etc., to reduce the amount of red blood cells.

Source: http://www.nursingschoolsinchicago.org [Nursing Schools in Chicago for More Info]

Assessment

In the medical condition known as polycythemia vera or other primary polycythemia syndromes, a major treatment options is phlebotomy.

A recommended hematocrit of less than 45 in men, and less than 42 in women, is the goal of phlebotomy therapy.

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