"Idiopathic" Thrombocytopenia

Thrombocytopenic Purpura and Chickenpox

“…Hirsch and Dameshek (1951) summarized the differences. The acute type shows no special sex incidence, has an acute onset, usually as purpura and bruising in a person, often a child, with no preceding history of any unusual bleeding and no marked family history of the condition or even of easy bruising.…”

“…The other 14 were labelled unknown infections. Hirsch and Dameshek (1951) had three cases following chickenpox, two after measles and rubella and two after the common cold in 18 examples of acute thrombocytopenic purpura, and noted that exacerbation in the chronic type followed infection in several. Clement and Diamond (1953) found infections in 65 of 96 children, the majority again in the upper respiratory tract, but seven had a more serious illness-rubella, chickenpox, infectious mononucleosis and pyelonephritis.…”

Prognosis in Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura of Childhood

“…There was no close correlation between blood and marrow eosinophilia, a connexion suggested by Hirsch and Dameshek (1951) but which Schwartz and Kaplan (1950) and Presley et al denied. Neither blood nor marrow eosinophilia was in any way correlated with the course of the disease or with the response to splenectomy in survivors, except that six of the seven fatal cases had no peripheral eosinophils. The two children with the highest eosinophilia had splenectomies; one was cured at once, but in the second case the symptoms were only slightly improved.…”

Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP): a historical odyssey

“…Thus began the era of the immune component of ITP. Also in 1951, Hirsch and Damashek described the important clinical distinctions between acute and chronic ITP (29), and in the same year corticosteroids were first used in the treatment of ITP by Wintrobe et al (30).…”