Refractory anemia is also called syndrome Myelodysplastic SMD. It’s a group of very serious diseases that appear as a result of inadequate production of red blood cells in the body. Such diseases tend to resist treatment and worsen its prognosis, although this can vary among patients and new treatments that have been tried. The causes of GDSS are not always identifiable. It can occur as a result of radiation or chemotherapy in the recent past, which are a minor version of the disease. Exposure to certain chemical substances have been linked with refractory anemia.
Persons at increased risk of suffering from this type of anemia tend to be white men of 60 years of age more. The failure to adequately produce red blood cells by the bone marrow produces a number of symptoms, which include extreme fatigue, red spots on the skin called petechiae, and the tendency to get sick easily. Other refractory anemia symptoms include an enlarged spleen, the breathing with effort and the difficulty to stay active for a long period due to exhaustion. Treatments used in most types of anemia, such as deploying supplements such as iron to help increase the production of blood cells, are ineffective in refractory anemia since these iron supplements do not stimulate medullar production of red cells. The only option to meet the immediate needs of the body is recourse to transfusions of blood to supply the body with the red blood cells you need. However, in some cases, this treatment is not sufficient and the survival rate begins to decline. In the worst cases, as in refractory anemia with excess blasts in transformation, also called acute myeloid leukemia, bone marrow does not have enough mature cells or platelets, therefore, the body becomes increasingly ill, and should not be many treatments that promise a total cure. The cure for this disease, when it works, is stem cell and chemotherapy.