Aplasia is the absence of an organ or body tissue, or a process that creates necessary elements in the body. It can be fatal, but some cases can be addressed with medical intervention or compensated for. Aplasia is different from atrophy, which is the gradual deterioration of an organ. Hyper and hypoplasia refer to too much or too little of something being formed. Some children are born without expected lymph nodes or hair cells, while others cannot produce bodily substances. The causes of aplasia are not always known.
Aplasia can be loosely transliterated from the Greek as “not to shape”. This definition doesn’t make much sense without more detail about what you don’t model or do. What aplasia really means in a medical sense is being born without an organ or some other body tissue, or being born without some process that creates necessary elements in the body, such as red blood cells. Very often these deficiencies are incredibly serious; lack of brain or heart is fatal. Other times, aplasia of some types can be addressed with medical intervention or there is no need to compensate for the missing element.
Two distinctions have to be made about aplasia. It is very different to be born without possessing something and to lose it through degeneration. Any form of wasting disease that causes an organ to fail or gradually deteriorate is usually called atrophy.
The non-medical community may also be more familiar with terms like hyper and hypoplasia. These correspond respectively to too much or too little of something being done or formed. Hypoplastic left heart is the inability of the left ventricle in the heart to form fully, so it is very underpowered and usually nonfunctional. Conversely, cardiac aplasia would mean no heart, which did not survive.
While aplasia always seems fatal, this is not the case. There are many cases where babies are born with an aplastic organ and can lead relatively healthy lives. Children may be missing a kidney or spleen, for example. In the former case, a single healthy kidney can sustain life, and in the latter, the use of prophylactic antibiotics to prevent serious infections is usually the most effective treatment. It’s more serious if the missing organ or structure performs a function that can’t be fully replaced, but even in these cases, doctors are sometimes able to use other parts of the body to create what’s missing.
It is important to note that this term does not only refer to the absent organs, but to other structures in the body. Some children don’t have all the expected lymph nodes, others fail to grow hair cells over a specific area or the skin to completely cover the body. Yet other babies are born without the ability to produce bodily substances such as sperm or red blood cells. Each missing type gets its own treatment, and some conditions that aren’t fully correctable, such as an inability to produce sperm, aren’t likely to be life-threatening.
The causes of aplasia are not always known. Sometimes the manifest condition has clear links with heredity. Other times, while the missing element results from genetic errors, there is no indication of family history or likelihood of recurrence in siblings or descendants of the person with the condition.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
