Sickle Cell Anemia Research Paper

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Pages: 3

Sickle Cell Disease is a blood disorder that is inherited and affects millions of people around the world. Sickle disease causes RBC’s (red blood cells) to form into crescent shapes, they can easily break apart and cannot bring enough oxygen to all necessary parts of the body. Sickle anemia causes severe pain in the chest, back, arms, legs and abdomen, and they have painful episodes called crises and they can last from hours to days. Doctors try to treat only the pain and not the sickle cell as a whole by prescribing patients with either Opioid (Morphine), Anti-Inflammatory Medication (Ibuprofen), and Antibiotics and sometimes oxygen but the medicine being prescribed to sickle cell patients sometimes cause them to become addicted to the prescribed …show more content…
Hydroxyurea treats sickle cell anemia by helping to prevent formation of sickle- shaped RBC’s (red blood cells) which is used to decrease the amount of painful crises and reduce the need for blood transfusions. Dr. George Buchanan, who is a professor of pediatrics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who also helped lead the expert panel that developed the guidelines says that ‘The drug hydroxyurea increases the production of healthy fetal hemoglobin, making the red blood cells less stiff and rigid. Even though the drug does not cure the disease, clinical trials found it significantly reduces crisis episodes and hospitalizations” but as Dr Carlton Haywood Jr., an assistant professor of hematology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine said “Despite the widespread concern about overuse of opioids, the recommendations urge physicians caring for sickle cell patients to use the powerful painkillers when necessary.” Which is why many patients “either don’t have access to it, or don’t have access to a doctor who’s knowledgeable or who emphasized how effective it