Friday, March 15, 2013

Primary Hemostasis

Primary hemostasis is the initial response to vascular injury.

Now, I'm one of those people who learns best with a goal in mind, where small details only make sense if I have an initial idea of where they fit in with the big picture. I need to know the generals before I move to specifics, like looking at something from a distance then zooming in, rather than zooming out from the specifics to the general. I don't know why, but my professor seems to think a one sentence explanation of the general outline and then hours of the specifics moving to the general is good enough. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel like most human beings can't learn that way, so I'm going to teach this to you the right way.

So with that long-winded explanation out of the way, here's the general outline of this section:

PRIMARY HEMOSTASIS
- Overview of the three stages of Hemostasis
- Blood vessel function for the primary hemostatic plug
- Platelets in Hemostasis
      ~ Production
      ~ Structure
      ~ Formation of a platelet plug
            - Adhesion
            - Shape alteration
            - Aggregation (Primary and Secondary)
            - Secretion

Introduction

All right, so first up--what are we leaning?

Answer: Coagulation! Isn't that exciting?!

But what is coagulation you may ask? Well, to be more correct we could say blood coagulation, which is essentially the formation of a blood clot. You know when you get a cut and then your body heals itself and sometimes there's a scab? Some of you might even have a faint recollection of the word "platelets" from your early biology days. But I suppose I'm getting rather ahead of myself.

And actually, now that I really think about it--coagulation is only a part of what we will be learning; a nonetheless useful part that, when combined with others that will be discussed, will paint the picture of the Hemostasis System. And I realize I may have lost some people, but stick with me for another moment and I'll fix it. (for some reason this whole unit is called Coagulation even though it should technically be Hemostasis and I've just now come to this realization. Professors can make things so much more difficult than they need to be at times, don't they?)

To make things a little easier, here is a basic outline of what I will be discussing:

HEMOSTASIS
- Primary Hemostasis
     ~ Platelets
- Secondary Hemostasis + Fibrinolysis
     ~ Coagulation Cascade
- Disorders
     ~ Platelet Disorders
     ~ Coagulation Disorders
     ~ Fibrinolytic Disorders
     ~ Thrombosis/Thrombophilia
           - Anticoagulant Therapy