[Long-term clinical course of patients with chronic autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura]

We studied 296 patients with thrombocytopenic purpura in our hospital from 1974 to 1985; 179 acute and 117 chronic forms. We identificated inherence forms (9.5%), of the last 106, 73 accepted to participate in the long time study. We found 69 patients with autoimmune chronic thrombocytopenic purpura, with the following response to the treatment with prednisone: 1. Long total remission for 8 to 100 months in 27 patients. 2. Total remission with relapse in 35 patients. 3. Partial remission in 5 patients. 4. No remission in 2 patients. We realized splenectomy in 16 patients of second group, in four of third group and one of fourth group. Everybody are in total remission althrough we had two with temporal relapse. We analyzed the factors with the excellent evolution, 5 of 69 patients with autoimmune forms (7.2%), their evolution to disseminated eritematous lupus. Nobody of the cases evolutioned to malignance.