Coagulation is a mystery!!!!!

Welcome back readers. Thanks for supporting me and my blog.

Today the topic we are going to see is coagulation.

So what is coagulation?

Coagulation is a process of forming clots and arresting the bleeding that may be due to one of many causes.

For that process to happen many things are required which comes to action from either endogenous or exogenous sources to the body.

There is also a term called Hemostasis, which involves a complex sequential series of events that involve both clotting and anticlotting mechanisms to maintain the fluid nature of the blood inside the blood vessels.

To understand about the coagulation we must know little about the anatomy, physiology of the blood circulation inside the body.

The microanatomy of the blood vessels contains mainly three layers from outside to as follows:

(i)Tunica adventitia

(ii)Tunica media

(iii)Tunica intima

The one that carries out most interest in this topic is tunica intima.

Tunica intima contains the lining which is called the endothelium.

Because the endothelium cells are the ones that stimulate a cascade of clotting events whenever an injury happened to the blood vessels. There are so many factors that are responsible for that.

Another important member of our clotting team is the platelet.

They are the source of serotonin and other vasoconstrictors, which are essential to arrest the bleeding initially. The platelets adhere to each forming plug, which binds to the site of injury and acts as a barrier for the leak of blood.

The temporary plug formed initially gets converted to a permanent definitive clot with the help of another arsenal of the clotting team known as fibrin.

The fibrin is initially in a precursor form called fibrinogen which is soluble in plasma. The final fibrin is insoluble.

This conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin is a major event in the clotting mechanism, which calls for aid from the clotting factors.

The clotting factors are as follows:

Factor	Factor name
I	Fibrinogen
II	Prothrombin
III	Thromboplastin
IV	Calcium
V	Proaccelerin, labile factor, accelerator globulin
VII	Proconvertin, stable factor
VIII	Antihemophilic factor
IX	Christmas factor
X	Stuart-Prower factor
XI	Plasma thromboplastin antecedent
XII	Hageman factor, glass factor
XIII	Laki-lorand factor

Question for today?

Did you notice that we missed a clotting factor in between? if not please go through again.

yeah, factor VI is missing..... think why we are not including the factor VI in this team...