Platelets and cancer… the plot doesn’t always thicken

Abstract

Background: Platelets have critical roles in preventing blood loss following injury, promoting wound healing, and in fighting infection through innate immune defense strategies. Key Results: Deficiencies in platelet number or function either as a result of disease, as a consequence of therapy, or both can lead to dramatic and potentially fatal consequences. Conclusions and Inferences: With the advent of new therapeutics targeting pathways within hematological malignant cells that are also important for platelet function, monitoring the state of a patient's haemostasis system is now an important clinical consideration.

Case report: Chronic disseminated intravascular coagulopathy with concurrent paraneoplastic secondary hyperfibrinolysis in a dog with metastatic nasal adenocarcinoma

“…Finally, regenerative anemia and mild thrombocytopenia of the dog could have represented a response to ongoing hemorrhage experienced for multiple days. The decreased platelet aggregability that was noted in this patient is suspected to be related to several factors such as a consumptive process from the severe epistaxis, an in vitro change due to the thrombocytopenia, and platelet dysfunction secondary to metastatic neoplasia ( 30–33 ).…”