Prof. Tomasz Szczepanski on hemophilia: We have reached a certain level of quality of life, but we are still a little short of talking about normal life

What is hemophilia and what population is affected by this disease in our country?

Hemophilia is an inherited disorder associated with impaired blood clotting. The most common condition in Poland at the moment is hemophilia A, with hemophilia B being the second most common. These are sex-linked inherited diseases, which means that men are most often affected, while women are carriers. However, there are also a few female patients in our population. Hemophilia A is associated with congenital factor VIII deficiency, and in hemophilia B it is associated with congenital factor IX deficiency. If there is a severe form of hemophilia (less than 1 percent factor), these patients have a very high risk of bleeding, especially delivery and intramuscular bleeding, and repeated delivery bleeding leads to joint destruction. Fortunately, such situations are already rare, because we can protect patients from this in a good way. It is worth adding that not only patients with severe hemophilia can have rec...