Gallbladder Surgery, Would You get your Spleen Out

It looks like I'm going to have to have surgery to remove my gallbladder. I was thinking about it and I was wondering if I should go ahead and get my spleen out at the same time. I know the surgery is going to throw my platelets all down and then there is the ultimate fact that my ITP seems to be getting worse every year and eventually I want to get off Medicare and work again and N-plate probably won't be covered (steroids, winrho, don't work anymore). Just wondering if I should bring it up to my hemo. What would you do? Realize that more risk, more recovery time.

Sure, you should bring it up to your doctor if you are curious.

I don't know what the surgeon would say, but if I were to make a guess, I would bet the doctor would want to do the surgeries as two separate operations. interesting question-

Can they do both laproscopically at the same time?

Why do you want your spleen removed? I would refuse that outright.

2 main reasons I'm considering getting my spleen out.

1) I'm worried about the consequences of NOT having my spleen out and having surgery. Every time something happens in my body, my platelets drop VERY quickly, like 100K in 48 hours and I'm worried about bleeding to death

2) my ITP has been getting progressively worse, with very few treatments working and I'm afraid that they won't be able to bring my platelets up if they fall again. The IVIG brought up my platelets this time, the NPLATE seems to be having little effect.

Did you give up with the Nplate?

I'm very anti-splenectomy so ignore me when I talk about splenectomy!

Tgurin - just a question. What will you do if the splenectomy isn't successful? Do you have a back-up plan?

Sandi-Same thing I would do if I didn't go ahead with getting Spleen out. At this point, all treatments haven't tried don't depend on Spleen.

Really difficult question. I think you should better tell about your worries to your doctor and listen to his suggestions..

I think you should probably not resurrect such old threads!

Welcome to the forum by the way.

Have an indium scan before even thinking about splenectomy

Hi, Ann!
Thanks, I see now.. I was browsing the websites on this topic and didn't pay attention on the date when was replying.. That's because I have very poor experience of posting on forums :laugh:

Anyway, I didn't find more actual thread on this topic within the forum.. So I decided to post here some useful materials.. which helped me.. just in case some other people will be searching fpr the information, as me.
What to Do with Signs of Gallbladder Problems?

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