Bleeding in haemato-oncological diseases: how to score, treat, predict

Abstract

The scope of the thesis is: “bleeding in patients with hypoproliferative thrombocytopenia”. Despite platelet transfusions bleeding occurs frequently in these patients and besides highlighting the variance in methodology of assessing bleeding symptoms and reporting in different bleeding scales, various risk factors for bleeding are illustrated in the introduction of the thesis. In the three following chapters the scoring of bleeding symptoms, the adjudication of symptoms in bleeding scales and the methodology concerning these aspects and more of a large platelet transfusion trial comparing pathogen reduced platelets (by using the Mirasol technique) to control platelet products is described. Chapter five describes the results of this randomized controlled trial and in the following chapter the association between endothelial damage (as measured by microalbuminuria in patients) and bleeding is described. Alternative bleeding scales besides the WHO bleeding scale are described in chapter seven and the last chapter summarizes the findings.