A middle-aged college professor from Boston is in the Swiss Alps ...

Question

A middle-aged college professor from Boston is in the Swiss Alps studying astronomy. He arrived two days ago and plans to stay the entire year. However, he notices that he is short of breath when he walks up steps and that he tires easily with any physical activity. His symptoms gradually disappear; after two months, he feels fine. Upon returning to the United States, he has a complete physical exam and is told that his erythrocyte count is higher than normal. (a) Attempt to explain this finding. (b) Will his RBC count remain at this higher-than-normal level? Why or why not?

Accepted Answer

Hi, everybody. Here's the next problem. A 45 year old woman from Chicago takes a two month vacation to live with her sister in the town of Vermont in Switzerland. However, she begins to experience headaches, dizziness and shortness of breath. Upon returning to Chicago, she was all fine within a month. Identify the condition that she might be having a thalassemia B Leukemia C polycythemia or D thrombocytopenia. Well, the biggest kind of indicator and what we want to focus on at first in here is that this condition began in Switzerland, but resolved spontaneously upon returning to Chicago. And when we think about Switzerland, that's a very mountainous country. So going from a mountainous area back to a, you know, relatively flat area, we might be thinking about altitude, which can have an effect on the body. The higher altitude area has less oxygen present in the area. And since her symptoms resolved when she returned to Chicago, we know that her symptoms were somehow connected with being at the high altitude. So we look at our answer choices, we would rule out anything that you wouldn't expect to go away on its own. So that would rule out choice a thalassemia, which is a genetic condition. So you wouldn't expect that to resolve. And thalassemia affects the body's ability to produce hemoglobin and erythrocytes. So choice a, not a correct answer. And then choice B leukemia leukemia is, are, is a form of blood cancer. So again, you wouldn't expect that to resolve just by moving back to your hometown. So we'd rule that out. And then finally to d thrombocytopenia is a condition where the platelet count in blood is low. And so one, you wouldn't expect that to resolve on moving back to low altitude. It's not particularly associated with altitude in any way. And the symptoms aren't what you'd be looking for with low platelets. You'd be looking for symptoms of trouble with blood clotting. So you'd be expecting uh more bruising than usual, you'd have trouble stopping bleeding after an injury. So it's not the symptoms we're looking at. So we're looking for these symptoms of headaches, dizziness, and shortness of breath. And we're looking for them resolving upon coming back down to a lower altitude. And that would be consistent with our remaining choice polycythemia, which is a condition where there is an excess of red blood cells. And this would make sense with the conditions here because at high altitudes where there's less oxygen in the air, the kidneys send out erythropoetin, the hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. The kidney sends the lower blood oxygen as a result of lower oxygen in the air. And the body tries to make up for this by making more blood blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. But this is not going to help things because it's not a lack of red blood cells causing a low oxygen but literally not enough oxygen in the air. So the end result will be, the body is churning out all these new red blood cells and you start to have side effects from an excess of them because this can cause a thickening of the blood, which can cause trouble with circulation throughout the body and problems with blood flow in general. So again, the condition that she might be having as a result of having been staying at high altitude for two months and then resolving itself once you return to a lower altitude is choice C polycythemia, an excess of red blood cells. See you in the next video.

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