This course began with a discussion on homeostasis, the body’s desire to maintain a state of physiological equilibrium. Numerous factors can disrupt our inborn system of chemical checks and balances, activators, and inhibitors. Two of the more common are acquired disease states and disorders passed on to offspring via inheritance.
Regarding coagulation, disease status and genetics can adversely affect the functionality of many hemostatic processes. Impaired hemostatic mechanisms may result in hemorrhage or thrombosis, whether acquired in disease or inherited.
- A situation of hemorrhage, or bleeding external to the vasculature, most often stems from physical vessel trauma but may also arise from a wide variety of disease states.
- Thrombosis does not require physical trauma and is the activation of hemostatic processes at an inappropriate time in an improper place and may arise from several inherited or acquired disease states.
The following pages will introduce some of the more commonly encountered coagulation disorders.
