Welcome to Helix Talk, an educational podcast for healthcare students and providers covering real-life clinical pearls, professional pharmacy topics, and drug therapy discussions.

This podcast is provided by pharmacists and faculty members at Rosal Franklin University College of Pharmacy.

This podcast contains general information for educational purposes only. This is not professional

advice and should not be used in lieu of obtaining advice from a qualified health care provider.

And now on to the show. Welcome to Helix Talk, episode 80. I'm your co-host Dr. Kane. I'm

Dr. Schumann. And I'm Dr. Patel. And the title of today's episode is,

Hit Me With Your Best Shot,

A Brief Review of Hepburn-induced Thromocytopenia or Hit.

And really, to kick this one off,

I think it's appropriate to start with a patient case.

So we'll have this example patient who's a 75-year-old female,

who is admitted with peritonitis and found to have a

small bowel perforation and she underwent a repair of that perforation. So on post-operative

day one, things were looking good. So they started some subcubeheron-heron-her 5,000 units,

subcutaneous TID for VT prophylaxis. And over the next several days with the help of her surgery and IV antibiotics, she was doing

great.

And then on post-operative day seven, she's almost ready to leave the hospital.

And her CBC, they note that her platelet count decreased from 170,000 to 80,000 over

the course of about a day.

In addition to that, they noted that she had new left lower extremity

swelling and pain, and a diagnostic workup suggested that that was a new DVT for her. So in this

context, we have a patient with a platelet trend that is suggestive of thrombocetopinia for sure.

...