When you have a bleeding disorder you don’t usually need to understand how blood clots are formed and what might be going wrong in your case. However, sometimes it can help when explaining what a bleeding disorder actually is and to debunk myths (like the old one about people bleeding to death from a paper cut.
We thought we’d share a couple of videos from Handwritten Tutorials which do a good job explaining.
How blood clots
In this video you can see the whole process for forming a clot when the wall of a blood vessel is damaged. Haemophilia, von Willebrand Disease and other Rare Clotting Factor Deficiencies all effect the formation of Fibrin. You need all the relevant clotting factors, including von Willebrand factor, in your blood and at the right levels to form the Fribrin you need to bind the platelets to form a clot. We also work with people with Inherited Platelet Disorders and you can see from the video why platelets are so critical to being able to form clots.
The clotting cascade
The clotting cascade is famously complicated. However, by using this video, if you have a factor deficiency then you can see exactly which part of the clotting cascade is affected by your condition.