Development of the human hemostatic system begins in utero and continues until well after birth. As a result, functional levels of many of the procoagulants, coagulation inhibitors, fibrinolytic components, and platelet-associated factors differ from those of older children and adults,…
Introduction * URL referenced in this chapter includes: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), . Elevation of the serum bilirubin level is a common, if not universal, finding during the first week of life and has been reviewed elsewhere.…
Historical Aspects Whereas many serious complications of pregnancy were well known in antiquity, maternofetal blood group incompatibility was recognized more recently. Against the high perinatal mortality prevailing until the mid-twentieth century, deaths from hemolytic disease were of little statistical significance,…
Introduction At no other time in the life of a patient is the physician confronted with as many diagnostic considerations in the interpretation of apparent disturbances of the erythrocyte as during the neonatal period. Neonatal erythrocytes are fundamentally different from…
This chapter offers a review of the anatomy and physiology of normal hematopoiesis that is intended to provide a basis for understanding the marrow failure syndromes described at length in the following chapter. In this chapter we briefly discuss the…
One of the primary challenges in the clinical management of cancer patients is to establish the correct diagnosis. For over a century, the primary means of diagnosis has been tumor microscopy, an approach that can readily distinguish benign from malignant…
Chemoprevention is the use of pharmacologic interventions to reduce the risk of cancer or to treat or reduce the risk of intraepithelial neoplasia (IEN ) developing into cancer. As a noninvasive lesion representing an often pathologically discernable intermediate state between…
Growth factors regulate the essential cellular process of proliferation and differentiation. Overproduction of growth factors is a common feature of tumor cells, stimulating unregulated proliferation of themselves in an autocrine fashion, and of adjacent cells in a paracrine fashion. More…
Introduction Cancer is a disease of genetic instability. Although only a few specific alterations seem to be required for generation of the malignant phenotype, at least in colon carcinoma there are approximately 10,000 estimated mutations at time of diagnosis. The…
Acknowledgments CM Croce is supported by Program Project Grants from the National Cancer Institute. GA Calin is the Alan M. Gewirtz Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar. He is also supported as a Fellow at the University of Texas MD Anderson…