In Reply.—We have read with interest the letter by Steinherz and Zaizov with regard to our article. The following three major points deserve consideration with respect to Steinherz and Zaizov's letter:
The number of patients regarded as having chronic ITP (23 of 93 patients) in their series is higher than previously observed.
It will be important to know more detail about the doses of corticosteroid administered to the five patients who were considered as not responding to therapy, as some of their patients received only 1 mg/kg, which constitutes half of the dose that we used for our patients.
It is most important to realize that the emphasis of our article was the statistically significant correlation observed between patients who responded to steroid therapy and the subsequent beneficial effect of splenectomy. This correlation was not observed with the patients who did not respond to therapy, with