Curriculum · Hematology
Classification of thrombocytopenia
What it is
Thrombocytopenia is one of the quantitative disorders of platelets, and the peripheral blood smear is what divides it.
The first division is between a count that is false and a count that is real:
- Artifactual thrombocytopenia, from platelet clumping
- True thrombocytopenia
True thrombocytopenia divides again into hereditary thrombocytopenia, where the smear shows giant platelets with or without WBC inclusions, and the rest, which the smear then separates.