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Home > About HIT > Underdiagnosis of HIT

Three factors may help explain the underdiagnosis of HIT:
| 1. |
There is a general lack of awareness[21,30] that may be due, perhaps, to confusion created by the name of the disease, since clinically significant thrombocytopenia (less than 150,000/mcL platelets) may not be present in all patients with HIT.[15,30]
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| 2. |
Thrombocytopenia in HIT is paradoxically associated with thrombosis, not with bleeding.
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| 3. |
There are a large number of other causes of thrombocytopenia
in hospitalized patients (e.g., septicemia/sepsis, hemodilution, disseminated
intravascular coagulation, hypercoagulable states, hemodialysis, multisystem
organ failure, primary bone marrow disorders, and other concurrent
drug therapies).[32]
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The diagnosis of HIT should be made first on clinical findings.[17]
Laboratory tests for the diagnosis of HIT are useful; however, they still have limitations. Some laboratory tests are not routinely available for use in the clinical setting.[7,28]
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