What if the spleen has been removed or ceases to function?
The main problem is the risk of severe infection. The risk depends on age (children have a higher risk than adults if their spleens are removed) and on whether there is another disease present or not. The commonest type of infection is by a bacterium, Streptococcus pneumoniae or the “pneumococcus”, which is, as its name suggests, a cause of pneumonia amongst other diseases. In people without spleens, these bacteria are not filtered out of the bloodstream as effectively as they should be, so the infection can progress to septicaemia, a severe and sometimes fatal infection of the blood by a pneumococcus, or other micro-organisms. The lack of a spleen also makes people more susceptible to attacks of malaria.
