Prognostic Power of Thrombocytopenia in Critically Ill Patients

Assessment of thrombocytopenia in critically ill patients

“…Thus, mortality was significantly higher in the thrombocytopenic group. Similar results were obtained in other studies [3,4,8,9,[14][15][16]. Possible explanations for the increased mortality in patients with thrombocytopenia include the following: first, thrombocytopenia is a marker of severe organ dysfunction, which is frequently seen in patients with a greater disease severity.…”

“…A wide range for the incidence of thrombocytopenia has been presented in previous studies (13-44.1%) [4,6,9]; some results were comparable among the medical-surgical adult ICU (22.6%) [9] and the pediatric ICU (19.6%) [14]. Relatively higher results were obtained in medical adult ICUs (37.1%) [15], medical-surgical adult ICUs (40%) [16], a predominantly medical adult ICU (41%) [3], and medical adult ICUs (44%) [4]. Different types of patients under study as well as differences in the cutoff for defining thrombocytopenia likely explain this wide variation.…”