Mortality in Sickle Cell Disease

To the Editor: The article by Platt et al. (June 9 issue) 1 described the risk factors associated with early death in patients with sickle cell disease -- specifically, they found that, of the 69 “healthy” patients with sickle cell anemia who died, approximately 22 percent had acute strokes. Recently, we reported that “relative” hypertension, defined by patient-based normative standards in a group of 89 patients homozygous for sickle cell disease, was significantly associated with stroke in patients older than 20 years of age. 2 The elevated blood pressure in this group was in a range that would be considered normal on . . .