Blood Coagulation

Table of Contents

• Process of blood coagulation
• What is deep vein thrombosis (DVT)?

The most common fluid present in our body that circulates throughout the body under high pressure and maintains the functioning of the body is the blood. The loss of blood in a larger amount might sometimes lead to death.

Blood Coagulation is the process of forming a clot or thrombus in order to prevent excess loss of blood from the body. It is a gel-like mass that is formed by the platelets and fibrin in the blood.

The mechanism by which the body stops bleeding to prevent constant loss of blood is known as hemostasis. The entire process is divided here into three major steps:

• The primary hemostasis involves the process of vasoconstriction, which responds to the injury of the body in the vascular wall. Once injured, the vascular walls react immediately by reducing the amount of blood flow in the infected area.
• Next, the platelets play a key role in covering the injured area to stop the bleeding. They also activate a process that forms a fibrin clot known as the secondary hemostasis. This leads to the release of stored granular contents which contain serotonin, ADP and thromboxane, which results in further activation of platelets in the blood plasma.
• Since the platelets alone could not secure the damages caused to the vessel walls, thus a blood clot should be formed necessarily. This formation of the blood clots depends on several clotting factors which activate each other in the clotting cascade.
• This cascade results in the formation of fibrinogen, which is a soluble plasma protein. The fibrinogen is converted into fibrin proteins and they finally stick together to form a clot. Platelet clots are termed white thrombus and if the red blood cells are also present, it is known as red thrombus.

Deep vein thrombosis is a serious condition where the blood clot occurs in one or more deep veins of our body. In most cases, the clot in the vein might dissolve and travel through the body stream and affect several organs like the lungs and chest thus blocking the flow of the blood.

The most common symptoms of DVT include pain in muscles, especially legs and swelling but most times these clots might occur without any major symptoms. They usually occur due to medical reasons or because of less frequency in the body movements.

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