Incidence and Prognostic Significance of Thrombocytopenia in Patients Receiving Heparin Therapy

摘要

I read the recent article by Oliveira et al with interest. There are a few questions in my mind. First, the authors rely on automated platelet counts but ignore peripheral blood smear. This would lead to the inclusion of pseudothrombocytopenia, a condition of platelet clumping associated with blood collected in EDTA tubes. Second, a significant proportion of the enrolled patients are elderly with premorbid conditions.l Some of them are likely to receive several medications. While their exclusion criteria include only those receiving antineoplastic agents known to affect bone marrow, concomitant use of potential inducers of thrombocytopenia, including antimicrobials, analgesics, anticonvulsants, and thiazide diuretics, might contribute to the reported thrombocytopenia.