Disseminated intravascular coagulation findings in 100 patients

A retrospective study of 100 patients with disseminated intravascular coagulation from 1993 to 1997 is reported. Forty-five patients were neonates with a mean age of 12.6 days and 55 patients were infants, children and adolescents with a mean age of 6 years and 3 months. Most of them (91.5%) had complicated underlying conditions which included congenital anomalies, prematurity, malignancy, hematological and various diseases. Additionally, every patient had triggering conditions commonly identified as gram-negative septicemia. Bleeding and thromboembolic manifestations were found in 59.4 per cent and 19.8 per cent, respectively. The laboratory findings revealed red blood cell fragmentation, 89.6 per cent and thrombocytopenia, 85.8 per cent. Natural anticoagulants were studied in a few cases and revealed low levels of antithrombin III and protein C. The prompt effective management included treatment of underlying diseases, identification and relief of triggering conditions, correction of thrombocytopenia and coagulopathy, and fully supportive care. The overall case-fatality rate was 41.6 per cent which was not correlated with age, underlying diseases, triggering conditions, manifestation of bleeding, thromboembolism or shock, and exchange transfusion. However, a significant lower case-fatality rate was found in patients with positive culture (25%) as compared to those with sepsis and negative culture (51.7%) (p = 0.044). In addition, the febrile neutropenic patients, who showed good response to the administrated granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), survived from the DIC.