Credibility Building Material: Many of you in the audience are more than likely unfamiliar with this disease, my goal for today is to shed some light on this subject matter for you. You may be wondering what the letters ITP stand for. I’m so glad you asked. ITP stands for Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura. These are not just big words meant to impress you, they in fact have meaning to them that help us define this disease. Idiopathic means a disease that occurs spontaneously without a known cause. Thrombocytopenic is a disease where there is not a sufficient amount of platelets in the body, and I’ll discuss what platelets are in a minute, and finally, Purpura is extreme bruising (Familydoctor.org Editorial Staff, 2000). When you combine all…show more content… Thesis: ITP is a rare and dangerous disease that most people outside the patients and their families are unfamiliar with.
Transition: Now that we have established a foundation of what ITP stands for, let’s have a look at the dangers of this disease.
I. What is ITP? ITP is a disease where the patients’ body “harbor antibodies that sabotage production of platelets responsible for proper blood clotting” (Nathan Seppa, Science News).
A. ITP is a very serious disease. Something as slight as a nose bleed or a small bump can turn into a serious issue. Not only does the body mark its own platelets as harmful, but it is also does not produce enough platelets to replace the ones destroyed.
B. Levels of platelets between normal individuals and ITP patients differs greatly. Normal patients’ platelet counts range from 150,000 to 450,000 platelets per microliter of blood (Robert Norman, Discover). ITP patients range anywhere below this level, typically around 20,000 (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2013). Some going as low as 1,000 which constitutes as a medical emergency. Low platelet levels can have some serious consequences as we will discuss