Autohemotherapy

AUTOHEMOTHERAPY (from Greek autos—self, haima—blood, and therapeia—treatment), the use of one's own blood for therapeutic purposes. This method is also used for provocative-diagnostic and sometimes prophylactic purposes. The scope of application of autohemotherapy: infectious diseases (influenza, relapsing and typhus fevers, pneumonia, measles, scarlet fever, gonorrhea, and syphilis); in addition, a whole range of skin diseases (furunculosis, eczema, psoriasis, herpes zoster, etc., with some authors recommending injecting the blood near the site of the lesion or directly into the lesion focus); it is also used in surgery and gynecology. Some authors use heated blood, others use it unchanged, and still others subject the blood to freezing followed by thawing. Blood is taken with a syringe from the cubital vein in various doses and injected immediately. The method does not receive unanimous evaluation: some authors attribute a specific action to autohemotherapy, others do not distinguish it from protein therapy, and still others see an enzymatic action in it. Autohemotherapy is a harmless and painless method; it lacks local temperature and focal reactions, and it leads to an increase in the protective capabilities of the organism and an intensification of the work of the hematopoietic organs. Autohemotherapy is used in surgery for the treatment of acute purulent inflammatory processes. The German surgeon Lawen (1923) proposed, along with a wide incision, treating carbuncles on the face (lips, wings of the nose) with autohemotherapy. For this purpose, the patient's blood is repeatedly injected subcutaneously around the periphery of the focus in an amount of 20 to 40 cubic centimeters daily. Both Lawen and other authors cite a number of cases of complete recovery from this severe, often fatal, disease through the use of such a combined method (incision + autohemotherapy). In 1924, the German surgeon Vorschiitz proposed autohemotherapy for the prevention and treatment of postoperative pneumonias (see Pneumonia). Autohemotherapy for gonorrheal diseases was first used in 1922 by Noumey, who injected the patient's own blood into the subcutaneous tissue in cases of acute gonorrheal urethritis. For the purpose of injection, blood is taken (using a Luer syringe) in an amount of 3-5 cubic centimeters and injected intramuscularly or into the subcutaneous tissue of any part of the human body, most preferably into the buttock or the muscles of the abdomen. Repeated injections are performed at intervals of 2-4 days, with the dosage increased by 1.5-2 times depending on the organism's reaction to the previous injection. The best therapeutic effect is obtained in complicated forms of gonorrhea (epididymitis, prostatitis, and vesiculitis), in which improvement of the process occurs several hours after the injection. Upon palpation, the organ becomes almost painless, the infiltrate decreases sharply, but the remaining infiltration subsequently yields to resorption slowly. These phenomena can be observed particularly clearly in acute epididymitis. Under the influence of autohemotherapy, changes in the blood composition occur in the sense of an increase in leukocytosis up to 85% in the first 24 hours after the injection; subsequently, the leukocytosis gradually decreases, returning to normal by the 3rd-4th day. The resulting leukocytosis is explained by the irritation of the inflammatory focus—auto-inoculation from it and subsequent auto-immunization of the organism. In healthy individuals, such leukocytosis, and moreover such prolonged leukocytosis, is not observed.