PRIMARY idiopathic aplastic anemia is manifested by a profound anemia associated with leukopenia, neutropenia and thrombopenia and later by hemorrhagic tendencies and hypocellular bone marrow. It is an acquired disease of unknown cause occurring infrequently in childhood. In contrast to this type of the disease is a similar clinical entity due to a known etiologic agent and termed symptomatic or secondary aplastic anemia.
Ehrlich1 in 1888 first described the occurrence of the condition under discussion and termed it aplastic anemia. Frank2 in 1915 called the condition aleukia haemorrhagica. More recently Rhoads and Miller,3 working on the effect of intensive therapy with liver extract, noted that certain cases of primary idiopathic aplastic anemia failed to respond to this treatment, and they added the term refractory anemias to apply to these instances. Thus, from Ehrlich to Rhoads, the correct term for this disease probably is primary idiopathic refractory aplastic