Hello everyone,

my uncle had a heart attack in 1982 and since then he used to take aspirin along with necessary medicines. However, on october 2004 he had a sever blood hemorrhage at his stomach wall and he was given 6 units of blood. Also, the medical diagnostic was telling that aspirin is the main reason of the stomach hemorrhage and therefore the aspirin type was changed. However, a new problem has risen during his recovery period at the hospital which is decreased numbers of platelets where all the past tests of platelets count were in the normal range. Also, the platelets count has reached 20,000 /mm3 and he was given a solution through his arm that increased his platelets to around 150,000/mm3. As result, the following possible causes were reviewed:

- cancer
- bone marrow
- blood film
- red spots under the skin

and all of these causes have given normal results. Nowadays, his platelets count is around 77,000/mm3 and his doctors are feeling that they should take his spleen away when the platelets count is reaching an alarming level.

I want to know if there are any other tests that we can do to confirm this and/or determine the root causes before taking the decision of removing his spleen.

Best regards,