Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 8, 2026
Continuous Manual Exchange Transfusion for Patients with Sickle Cell Disease: An Efficient Method to Avoid Iron Overload
Published on: March 14, 2017
Pregnancy in sickle cell disease: maternal and fetal outcomes in a population receiving prophylactic partial exchange
1Université Paris XII-Créteil, Obstetrics and Gynecology, CHI Créteil, France. charlotte.ngo@curie.net
Objective:
To describe pregnancy outcomes for pregnant women with sickle cell disease (SCD) receiving prophylactic transfusions.
Study Design:
This retrospective case-control study compared pregnancy outcomes among women with SCD receiving prophylactic transfusions and women without any hemoglobinopathy, matched for ethnicity, parity, age and hospital.
Results:
The study included two groups of pregnancies: 128 in women with SCD (95 with SS phenotype and 33 with SC) and 128 in women with AA phenotype. No woman died. Two perinatal deaths (2.1%) and five alloimmunizations (5.3%) occurred, all in the SS group. Compared with the control group, HbSS disease was more often associated with pre-eclampsia (9.4% versus 2.3%, p=.03), preterm delivery (15.8% versus 6.2%, p=.01), birth weight <10th percentile (13.7% versus 3.9%, p=.008) and caesarean delivery (73.6% versus 26.4%, p<.01).
Conclusion:
Despite prophylactic blood transfusions, SCD remains a severe complicating factor in pregnancy. The policy of systematic transfusions should be analyzed in a sufficiently large randomized trial.
Related Concept Videos
01:22Bone Marrow Sampling and Transplants
The transplant begins with high doses of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, which aim to destroy the...
02:45Blood Transfusion and Agglutination
History
The history of blood transfusion dates back to the 17th century, when early attempts were made in animals. In 1818 James Blundell, a British doctor, performed the first successful human blood transfusion. Later in 1900, Karl...
01:19Rh Blood Group
01:15Blood Transfusion
Blood Transfusion Overview
A blood transfusion is a medical procedure used to replace blood lost due to injury, surgery, or to treat conditions such as anemia or cancer. During a transfusion, donor blood is...
01:15Transcytosis of IgG
IgG molecules from a mother undergo transcytosis starting around 13 weeks of gestation. The amount of IgG transferred and entering the fetal blood circulation increases with...