Blood tranfusions - how long before see benefits?
 

Hello All - Husband had his first transfusion (2 units) yesterday AM. Aranesp shots not working anymore, drop in HGB to 8.1 (from 8.9) 10 days after last shot. He still has no energy today. How long until we see the benefits of a transfusion? Have not dealt with transfusions since my brother had them 20+ years ago. Thanks for any input. Peachy

Transfusions
 

Hi Peachy,
Every unit of blood should increase the HGB about 1.0 so if your husband got 2 units his HGB should be something about 10.0. Then we never know how fast our HGB will decrease. My transfusion interval has been eveything between 1 week to 2 years and 4 months. For the moment it is 3 weeks.
Kind regards
Birgitta-A
74 yo, dx MDS Interm-1 2006. Positive results with Thalidomide + Prednisone.

Thanks Birgitta - Dr. ordered another blood test and results as of this afternoon are 9.3. Hoping it will go up a bit. Also found that he has pneumonia and probably had it all last week when he was really sick and had high fevers. On our second round of antibiotics. You have been on transfusions for a long time.
Thanks so much....Peachy

Peachy,

Normally a transfusion will give a patient some lost energy back, but other problems can easily prevent that improvement. Having pneumonia and fevers would certainly sap anyone's energy.

Thanks Neil. The pneumonia was a surprise of course. Am finding that many things can impact an MDS patient at unknown times. Am also hoping this second dose of anitbiotics will get the pneumonia and then maybe he will have some energy to get back to doing what he likes to do - working in the yard.

Benefit timeframe of raising Hgb...
 

When I have my regular transfusions, I need to have a set of pre-meds (Tylenol, Benadryl, and IV hydrocortisone). Because of the variations in volume and freshness date, it can take 3 or 4 days before I "feel" the benefit of raising my Hgb. :cool:

Last time my hubby got a transfusion (2 units in February), he went from 7.6 to 10.8 the next day and continued to improve over the next few days to 12.0. Slowly sliding back down since then. I know that more often he has not seen that much of an improvement, and once the numbers barely budged at all.

Sometimes getting blood has little to do with energy and more to do with keeping your organs as healthy as possible thru higher blood levels, when you get to a certain point in leukemia there are a lot of things that can zap energy, just as there are meds for pain there are meds for energy, check with your doctor first, while on IV antibiotics keep an eye on wbc, sometime IV antibiotics can lower your wbc