If a wound does not stop bleeding after some time, the wounded individual has a haemorrhagic disease and his health and life are severely endangered. It therefore is of the utmost importance that a plug forms that closes the wounded vessel (=Haemostasis). If a plug forms in a vessel that is not wounded, blood flow stops and the organs fed by that vessel risk to die (=Thrombosis). Thrombosis in this way is the cause behind such common diseases as stroke and coronary infarction and the most common cause of death and disease in the western world.
An extremely intricate physiological mechanism is responsible for blood remaining fluid within the body and its prompt clotting outside the vessels. This mechanism (= haemostasis) relies on the interaction of the (wounded) vessel wall, the blood platelets and a series of proteins in the blood plasma. In the older person in western society the clottability of the blood and the state of the blood vessels are such that thrombosis readily occurs. This explains why coronary infarction and stroke are such common diseases. Also lung embolism and circulation problems in the legs, gut or kidneys contribute to the high death- and disease toll that thrombosis accounts for.
This situation can be remedied by decreasing the tendency of the blood to form plugs via the administration of the proper drugs. The ideal drug for this purpose has not been found yet.
A method to assess the coagulability of blood is required for estimation of the individual thrombosis risk and to control the effect of existing drugs, but also in order to find better drugs. The available methods to assess the reactivity of the haemostatic system of the blood are still relatively crude: measuring bleeding time and different forms of clotting time. Synapse b.v. specializes in more sophisticated methods for the assessment of blood coagulability.
Measurement of the Coagulability of Blood
Blood clots when it flows out of a wound or when it is collected in a glass tube. The most commonly used technique when doctors or scientists want to measure this process is to look for the moment when clotting starts. For instance by making a cut in the skin and wait for the bleeding to stop (bleeding time). Or in vitro, by collecting blood in sodium citrate in a plastic tube and then add calcium and thromboplastin and wait for the appearance of a fibrin clot (clotting time). This technique dates back centuries ago and is still used in many varieties. On this page we will introduce an alternative measurement of coagulability that gives more information, is much more accurate and that can be set up in any clinical or research laboratory. It is measured on a Thrombograph™ and is called the Thrombogram™.
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