Treatment
Treatment of HHT is symptomatic (it deals with the symptoms rather than the disease itself), as there is no therapy that stops the development of telangiectasias and AVMs directly. Furthermore, some treatments are applied to prevent the development of common complications. Chronic nosebleeds and digestive tract bleeding can both lead to anemia; if the bleeding itself cannot be completely stopped, the anemia requires treatment with iron supplements. Those who cannot tolerate iron tablets or solutions may require administration of intravenous iron sucrose, and blood transfusion if the anemia is causing severe symptoms that warrant rapid improvement of the blood count.
Most treatments used in HHT have been described in adults, and the experience in treating children is more limited. Women with HHT who get pregnant are at an increased risk of complications, and are observed closely, although the absolute risk is still low (1%).
Read more about this topic: Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)