0 a blood disorder in which the body does not produce enough platelets (= very small cells in the blood that make it thicker in order to stop bleeding caused by an injury):
General causes of thrombocytopenia include poor nutrition, infections, radiotherapy, and some drugs.
Second, platelet counts should be followed during the pregnancy, as often as every 2+4 weeks, in order to detect thrombocytopenia as it develops.
Recent work (ours and others) with antiplatelet antibodies has raised another issue: coincidence of auto- and allo-immune thrombocytopenia.
Without conclusive statistical analysis, thrombocytopenia cannot be seen as an independent prognostic marker.
It is important to have a high index of suspicion in a patient with thrombocytopenia and any of the above symptoms.
The anaemia, neutropenia and thrombocytopenia may occur either singly or in combination and there is, by definition, no underlying systemic illness to account for them.
The thrombocytopenia reverses shortly after cessation of the drug.
Nevertheless, the rarity of fetal thrombocytopenia and the inability to perform a study do not mean that we can ignore this problem.
The thrombocytopenia is due to dilution, platelet adhesion to circuit surfaces, and to destruction and removal of damaged platelets by the reticuloendothelial system.
