How low does a platelet count have to be before it can cause death in an adult?!
Question:
How low does a platelet count have to be before it can cause death in an adult?
My platelet count dropped from 90,000 to 50,000 in an hour while I was pregnant which precipitated my baby's premature birth via emergency c-section. I am wondering how close I was to dying.
Answers:
A low platelet count itself does not cause death...bleeding does. The lower your platelet count, the more likely you are to bleed. At the 50,000 level, you were at risk of excess bleeding with surgery. At the 10,000 level, you can have major bleeding without any kind of trauma like surgery. However, not everybody with those low levels will have bleeding. Even major bleeding does not always cause death. So there is no way of telling you exactly how close you were.
It may be that your doctor was also concerned about *why* your platelet count was dropping. Maybe you had pre-eclampsia with HELLP syndrome, which can be quite serious for a lot of reasons (see the second source for details). The main treatment is to deliver the baby as soon as possible.
I hope you and the baby are doing well now.