Hello and welcome to the zero to finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about hemalytic anemia.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at zero to finals.com slash hemolytic anemia or in the hematology section of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

Hemalytic anemia is where there is destruction of red blood cells.

And destruction of red blood cells is called hemolysis.

And this hemolysis leads to a low hemoglobin counts, which we call anemia.

There are a number of inherited conditions that can cause the red blood cells to be more fragile and break down faster than normal.

And this leads to a chronic hemolytic anemia.

And there's also a number of acquired conditions that lead to increased breakdown of red blood cells and hemolytic anemia.

Firstly, let's talk about the inherited hemolytic anemia.

And there's five you need to remember.

Erreditary sphero cytosis,

hereditary elliptocytosis,

thalassemia,

sickle cell anemia, and G6PD deficiency.

Then there's five acquired hemolytic anemia that you need to remember.

Autoimmune hemolytic anemia, aloeimmune hemoanletic anemia,

and these are transfusion reactions and hemolytic disease of the newborn, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, micro-angiopathic hemolytic amia, and prosthetic valve-related hemolysis.

So the features of hemalytic anemia, to start with, and they're all the result of the breakdown of

red blood cells. So the first one is

anemia, so this is due to reduction in circulating blood cells, spleenomegaly, and this is the spleen

becoming enlarged because it's filled with all the destroyed remnants of red blood cells,

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