Difficulty in blood clotting: what might probably be the issue

Have you ever been in a situation where you sustained injury but the blood was unable to stop. Have you also been in a hospital where after collecting blood sample for diagnosis but the site for collection was not able to heal.

Well, for you to understand what I really meant, I think we should pay attention as we go down to this story.
It was actually on a Saturday morning during our Normal sample collection. We do collect samples from patient every morning before getting to do the test.

This sample collection is actually done in phlebotomy(a laboratory section meant for blood collection). That morning after collecting blood for up to five persons waiting for the next person. There is this man who is actually the next person for sample collection. I found out that after collecting blood from this man, the vein could not stop bleeding.

After much effort trying to stop the bleeding, I discovered that the more effort we apply, the more blood gushes out from the vein.

This issue draws the attention of people around that made me to keep wondering what the problem could be. I never knew this could be serious than I expected. I kept wondering till I get to know what the problem is, then I decided to read up.

Coagulation disorder is a disease that prevents the blood from clotting. This disease is rare but can be seen occasionally in some hospitals. This disorder is grouped into two, which are acquired and hereditary coagulation disorder. But before we go into details, I think it will make more sense if we understand what this disorder is all about and how it is being emanated.

Coagulation

This is the activation of some clotting factors. clotting factors are proteins involves in blood clotting. The inactive form of this clotting factors are termed zymogen. This clotting factors remains inactivated until they are being placed with glycogen cofactor that initiates its activation. Whenever a clotting factor is activated, a symbol "a" is used to show that a given factor is in its activated state.

Looking at the diagram below, there are a lot of factors expressed in the table. This factors are from 12 to factor 1. Each and everyone of them has its unique function.

Whenever there is any alterations in any of the factors, bleeding disorder sets in, leading to inability of the blood to clot.
Each and everyone of the factors has a unique name depending on the factor that is being affected.

Coagulation factor is also being grouped into three pathways. This includes, the intrinsic, extrinsic and common pathways. Both the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways comes together to form the common pathways.

Extrinsic pathway is activated whenever there is injury to the endothelial tissues exposing the tissue factor to blood which now bound to calcium and factor Vlla. This bounding leads to the activation of factor X. While the intrinsic pathway begins when there is exposure of factor Xll to collagen.

Understanding coagulation cascade will help us to know that whenever there is defect in any of the factor comes a clotting disorder. This clotting disorder is actually being divided into two which are hereditary and acquired clotting disorder.

The hereditary clotting disorders are the hemophilia why the acquired are caused by the following:

¶liver disease

¶ vitamin k deficiency

Let's begin with the hereditary coagulation disorders.

hemophilia

This is an inherited bleeding disorder that happens whenever there is deficiency or decrease in production of some specific factors. People with hemophilia A is as a result of decrease or deficiency of factor Vlll(8). Why the one of hemophilia B is caused by factor lX deficiency.

People who have this disorders lacks the ability of their body protein to bind with the platelets.

According to CDC, the actual number of people living with this disorder is not known but it was estimated that 33000 men lived with this disorder between the year 2012 to the year 2018.

According to CDC, Hemophilia is more common in men than women.
Looking at the following 👇

Males inherit one X chromosome from the female parent and one Y chromosome from the male parent. Females have two X chromosomes, inheriting one from each parent. The genetic change that causes hemophilia is a recessive change in the X chromosome. Males have one copy of the genes in the X chromosome, and females have two copies.
As a result, males have a 50%Trusted Source chance of developing hemophilia if their biological mother is a carrier of the gene. If they inherit the affected X chromosome, they have hemophilia.

For female, this defect X chromosome can only affect one of the double X chromosome they have, therefore making them a carrier unlike men that have only one X chromosome.

Hemophilia are grouped into two major types which I have already mentioned above. This hemophilia are being caused depending on the factors that are affected. For hemophilia B which is also known as Christmas disease, factor IX(9) are being affected while hemophilia B are due to factor Vlll(8) deficiency.

Hemophilia A is four times more common than hemophilia B, While Hemophilia B only occurs in 1 out of 25000 men.

acquired clotting disorders

Like I mentioned earlier, this clotting disorder can be caused by two major factors which includes liver disease and vitamin k deficiency.

Liver disease

The liver plays a central role in the clotting process, and acute and chronic liver diseases are invariably associated with coagulation disorders due to multiple causes: decreased synthesis of clotting and inhibitor factors, decreased clearance of activated factors, quantitative and qualitative platelet defects, hyperfibrinolysis, and accelerated intravascular coagulation

Looking at the following above, you will get to understand that liver is one of the major contributor when it comes to bleeding disorders. Reason being that, the liver produces the coagulation factors needed for coagulation to take place.

When the liver get infected or becomes damaged, there will be no secretion of coagulation factors which leads to clotting disorders.

vitamin k deficiency

Vitamin K deficiency decreases levels of prothrombin and other vitamin K–dependent coagulation factors, causing defective coagulation and, potentially, bleeding

Whenever there is decrease or deficiency of vitamin k in the body this prevents blood from clotting. Deficiency of this vitamin can as well cause internal hemorrhage.

Conclusion

Bleeding disorders is a very bad disease that needs proper attention if when gotten. Like I said earlier, this disease is genetic and can be transferred from one parents to the other.

Though this disease may seems incurable but can be managed through taking proper medications.