Lab monitoring of patients on anticoagulants (warfarin and other therapies), makes up such a large percentage of lab coagulation testing. Because of this, laboratorians sometimes tend to think of coagulopathies only as conditions associated with prolonged clotting times. Lab staff don't tend to see hyper-coagulable patients as often as we see hypo-coagulable patients (those with high INRs and prolonged aPTTs). It's important to remember that the reason many patients have prolonged clotting times is because they are on anticoagulants, and they are on anticoagulants because they have a condition which makes them prone to excessive clotting.
There are several relatively common conditions which make patients hypercoagulable. The spontaneous formation of thrombi is clinically-serious. An embolism is an obstruction of an artery. A thromboembolism can cause significant injury to downstream tissues and organs and result in death.
The most common type of thromboembolism is deep vein thrombosis (DVT). If a thrombus from a DVT dislodges and moves to the lung, a pulmonary embolism (PE) occurs. A PE is a medical emergency. In patients with PE, those who receive mechanical ventilation, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or thrombolytic treatment still have very high mortality rates: 80%, 77% and 30% respectively.
What factors cause a person to be more prone to thrombi?
