Wathsala Manindrani: Managing Severe Hypertriglyceridemia in Resource-Limited Settings
Wathsala Manindrani, Transfusion Medicine Senior Registrar at National Cancer Institute, Sri Lanka, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Managing severe hypertriglyceridaemia can be challenging, specially in resource-limited settings.
Recently, we managed a patient with familial hypertriglyceridaemia requiring urgent lipid reduction.
An automated Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (TPE) was initially attempted.
However, due to the extremely high triglyceride levels, the procedure could not be continued as the machine generated persistent alarms related to the lipemic plasma.
In Sri Lanka, Lipoprotein Apheresis (LA) using lipoadsorption columns is not currently available.
Therefore, our team proceeded with a manual plasma exchange, which allowed us to successfully remove the lipemic plasma and continue the therapeutic intervention.
This case highlights how clinical adaptability and teamwork are essential in transfusion medicine, particularly in settings where advanced apheresis technologies are limited.
Even with resource constraints, effective patient care can be achieved through thoughtful modification of available techniques.”

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