Felty's syndrome. Good response to adrenocorticosteroids: possible mechanism of the anaemia.

Felty's syndrome. A clinical and pathological survey of 21 patients and their response to treatment.

“…One moderately affected patient appeared to have been cured by prednisone. The results in this patient and in one reported by Pengelly (1966) indicate that corticosteroid therapy may occasionally be successful. On the other hand the same dosage of prednisone produced only partial improvement in two out of six severely affected patients.…”

“…This may explain the conflicting reports of the effects of corticosteroids (Pengelly, 1966;Ruderman and others, 1968) and of splenectomy (Collier and Brush, 1966;Green and Fromke, 1966;Ruderman and others, 1968). To make a more valid assessment we have divided our patients into three groups according to the severity of their disease.…”

Splenectomy in tropical splenomegaly.

“…This is further evidence for a malarial cause of this syndrome and also for implicating the spleen in the plasma volume changes. The role of the spleen is also shown by a case of Felty's syndrome (Pengelly, 1966), in which a marked reduction in spleen size and plasma volume after corticosteroid therapy was found. Not all patients with big spleen disease or idiopathic tropical splenomegaly respond to antimalarial therapy, and even for those cases which do respond long-term supervision may be impossible.…”