Spleen Enlargement Process
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Overview of Splenomegaly
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An enlarged spleen (splenomegaly) is a serious condition, and can cause dangerous problems. Symptoms are not very specific but can cause severe pain in the back or upper left abdomen (where the spleen resides), or simply just a feeling of fullness or engorgement in the area. Physicians can often determine an enlarged spleen simply by feeling it through the skin, but a confirmation from an X-ray is often necessary. Spleen enlargement itself isn't a disease, however, but rather a symptom or side-effect of another disease or condition-such as anemias, cancers or infection. Thus, to treat splenomegaly, doctors instead treat the disorder that cause it. Treating the disorder usually shrinks the spleen back to normal size, but there have been cases where the spleen must be removed.
About the Spleen
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The body of the spleen appears red and spongy, surrounded by a resilient outer "skin." Blood vessels are interwoven with connective tissue, which make up the aforementioned red pulpy material of the spleen. The red pulp purifies the blood and removes old or dead blood cells. The blood comes into the spleen by the splenic artery. The artery fans out into many tiny vessels, and each of those branches is encompassed by a collection of lymphocytes.
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Spleen Enlargement Process
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Thus, when a condition comes into the body, causing various side effects and conditions, it can affect the spleen, causing it to enlarge. It does this by trapping and storing too many blood cells. It starts with the ones that it would normally filter out and lay waste to, but after the system begins running on "hyperdrive," so to speak, it starts to filter out healthy blood. "This process," says diagnose-me.com in its splenomegaly article (2008), "creates a vicious circle: the more cells and platelets the spleen traps, the larger it grows; the larger it grows, the more cells and platelets it traps. Eventually, the greatly enlarged spleen also traps normal red blood cells, destroying them along with the abnormal ones. In addition, excessive numbers of blood cells and platelets can clog the spleen, interfering with its functioning."
Further Symptoms
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Because the spleen is enlarged, it can cause pain, as mentioned above. More so, it's increased size pushes itself against or into areas that it normally wouldn't, thus, causing pain or discomfort. The spleen rests against the stomach, for example, and can cause the patient to feel full after a small snack. Because of the hoarding of blood by the spleen, and cutting off of blood flow to some extent, the left shoulder can also become painful. Merck.com (2008), an online medical journal, has this to say about the other problems the spleen enlargement can cause: "anemia as a result of too few red blood cells, frequent infections as a result of too few white blood cells, and the tendency to bleed as a result of too few platelets."
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