Thrombocytopenia overview

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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

Overview

Thrombocytopenia (or -paenia, or thrombopenia in short) is the presence of relatively few platelets in blood.

Generally speaking a normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 and 450,000 per mm³. These limits, however, are determined by the 2.5th lower and upper percentile, and a deviation does not necessarily imply any form of disease. The number of platelets in a blood sample also decreases quickly with time and a low platelet count may be caused by a delay between sampling and analysis.