A Practical Approach to Polycythemia in the Outpatient Setting and Its Importance

Abstract

Polycythemia left undiagnosed or untreated may result in a number of sequelae including myocardial infarction or cerebral vascular accidents. While the diagnostic criteria, classification, and workup are established, many practitioners fail to either initiate the process or perform the correct workup. Most clinicians are familiar with polycythemia and its respective clinical encounters, nevertheless, the fact that it is so frequently misdiagnosed or improperly worked up necessitates additional education. This case report covers three practical clinical examples of outpatient polycythemia, and their respective workups Furthermore, this publication will discuss the diagnostic criteria laid out by the World Health Organization and the confusion regards complications based on etiology.

Predictive value of admission D-dimer levels in patient with acute ischaemic stroke and COVID-19: a second-wave prospective cohort study

“…15 In addition to the D-dimer admission value categorisation, each continuous confounder is categorised into two groups. The categorisation was carried out based on previous study references, namely for Hb (high (≥165 g/L) vs low (<165 g/L)), 16 WBC (high (>0.011 x 10 9 /L) vs low (≤0.011 x 10 9 /L)), 17 PC (high (>450 × 10 9 /L) vs low (≤450 × 10 9 /L)), 18 RBG (high (≥200 mg/ dL) vs low (<200 mg/dL)), 19 PT (high (≥12.3 s) vs low (<12.3 s)), 20 INR (high (>1.1) vs low (≤1.1)), 21 aPTT (high (>40 s) vs low (≤40 s)) 22 and fibrinogen (high (≥400 mg/ dL) vs low (<400 mg/dL)). 23 All confounder categorisations above were based on the in-hospital mortality cut-off in each study.…”

Hematometabolic Index as a New Discriminator of Cardiometabolic Risk in Middle-Aged Men with Polycythemia and High Leukocyte Count in Peripheral Blood

“…Primary polycythemia is a rare disease, 10 , 11 and most cases of polycythemia in the general population are cases of secondary polycythemia, which is due to an increase in erythropoietin and is caused by various conditions, including smoking, sleep apnea, high altitude, chronic cardiopulmonary diseases, and erythropoietin-producing tumors. 12 Moreover, sleep apnea is closely associated with obesity, a central cardiovascular risk factor. 13 …”