ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the uses of apheresis in children that have been reported, the technical problems that are peculiar to apheresis in children, and the cognitive development of the child and how it affects the child’s perception of the procedure. Many diseases that occur more frequently in adults also affect children and it could be anticipated that if apheresis were used in these diseases that eventually it would be tried in pediatric patients as well. Thrombocytosis in children is usually secondary to some physiologic or pathologic state such as postsplenectomy, iron deficiency, and inflammatory disease, and is most often asymptomatic and self-limiting. Leukocytapheresis has been used in leukemic patients to reduce the patients’ tumor burden, avoid the complications of extremely high leukocyte counts and to procure stem cells for autotransplantation in Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. Refsum’s disease has been used as an example of the benefit of plasma exchange in an inborn error metabolism.
