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Basil S. Strates, MD
Dow Pharmaceuticals Indianapolis

JAMA. 1976;236(20):2284.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In the report on donor RBC lysis by Howard and Perkins (236:289,1976), the term "plateletpheresis" was included in the title and appeared several times in the text. It was also present in the titles of three of the four references cited. This etymologically incorrect term appeared in print as early as 1968.¹ Since that time, plateletpheresis has been used to denote removal of platelets from blood, in both spoken and written English, instead of the etymologically correct terms "plateletapheresis" or "thrombocytapheresis" (platelet or thrombocyte + Greek aphairesis [removal]).^2(p1169)

In a similar situation back in the early 1950s, the compound word "plasmopheresis" was coined and used in an internal Atomic Energy Commission report of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. On my recommendation, the term was changed to "plasmapheresis" and henceforth appeared in the medical literature in its corrected form. Subsequently, terms such as . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by John D. Archer, MD, Senior Editor.

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