Hi everyone this lesson is on the signs and symptoms of low platelets. So I am going to talk about what platelets are why we need them and what happens when they are low! So What Are Platelets: Platelets are little pieces of cells that are present in the blood and they actually help to stop or reduce bleeding so if there's a cut they are there to help reduce or stop the bleeding by making a platelet plaque so the normal platelet count if you go to your doctor and your doctor tells you, your platelet count the normal platelet count is anywhere from 150,000 to 400,000/mm and you might see them use numbers like 150 to 400 depending on the units they use.
So a low platelet count is when platelets
are less than 150,000/mm and low platelets are also called thrombocytopenia. Thrombocyte
means platelet and penia mean low, so thrombocytopenia low platelets meaning
that you have a platelet count less than 150,000/mm, so if your doctor tells
you that you have a low platelet count it's lower than this number. So the
first thing we're going to realize with a low platelet count is that there's an
increased risk of bleeding we talked about platelets being required or helping
stop bleeding so if we don't have enough platelets we can have an increased risk
of bleeding and the places that we're going to see bleeding occur most often
with low platelets includes the gums so your mouth, so the gingival, the skin
so if you get a cut it might take longer to stop the bleeding and another one
is your nose so you might be more likely to have a nose bleed so something we
call epistaxis.
So these types of bleeding are more common
with low platelets, bleeding of the gum so when you're brushing your teeth if
there's any little cut it might have more bleeding it might take longer to stop
if you have a cut on your skin it might bleed more and take longer to stop and
with your nose you can have nosebleeds so these are the types of bleeding now there's
also increased bleeding in the following during 0menstruation so during periods
there can be more or heavier bleeding during and after giving birth and during
surgeries so all of these can have more bleeding occurring so bleeding is going
to happen with each of these anyway, but more bleeding can occur now there are other
bleeding risks as well these include blood in the urine and blood in the stool
so blood in the urine is hematuria we call that hematuria and blood in the
stool can either be hematopezia or Molina so don't worry about those medical
terms but you can have blood in your urine and blood in your stool so all of
these bleeding issues can lead to anemia and you may have issues with anemia as
well and that can lead to other symptoms.
I'm not going to talk about those in
this lesson but those are the bleeding risks or the bleeding that can occur
with low platelet counts there are also some skin findings as well we can see
something like this red or purple dots so you can see little things like this
on your skin and this is actually superficial bleeding in the skin so because
platelets are very important to ensure that bleeding doesn't occur you can
still have little bits of bleeding occurring under the skin you can get these
little red spots or dots like this and we call these petikia and purpura and
another important skin finding with regards to low platelets includes easy
bruising so if you were to even gently hit your arm on something it may cause
an easier bruise than usual and this could be a sign of a low platelet count
and some other associated symptoms with a low platelet count include fatigue so
you can feel a bit more tired these are more non-specific and they could be
related to blood loss in some way so there could be some connection with this.
In anemia and you can also have some
headaches as well so these can be another symptom of low platelet counts so
again low platelets, platelets are important to help stop and reduce bleeding
and if you don't have enough it can lead to an increased risk of bleeding so you
can see issues with bleeding of your gums bleeding on your skin and bleeding
from your nose and then there's also worsening bleeding with menstruation during
surgeries and there's also increased bleeding during and after giving birth and
we can also see some skin findings as we mentioned before so we call those
patikia and purpura those red little dots on your skin so if you see that that
could be a sign of low platelet count and you can also see easier bruising so you
can bruise easier with low platelets and then you have these non-specific symptoms
fatigue and headache so that was a quick lesson on signs and symptoms of low platelets.
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