This is a guideline from the British Society of Haematology on preventing and treating infection in patients with an absent or hypofunctional spleen. It was published in April 2024.
This is one of those topics that just doesn’t seem to get taught at med school in any detail. My knowledge of it was rather hazy. We probably all know about the need for vaccinations and the need for regular antibiotics, but beyond that there are a few useful bits and bobs for us in this guideline. Obviously much of this will be done in secondary care, but I think it’s useful for us to understand a bit more about why we do what we do.
The concept of ‘functional hyposplenism’ was definitely a new one for me.