| Coagulopathy is a state of inadequate or inappropriate activation of the body's intrinsic and extrinsic clotting factors. Several causes of coagulopathy exist, ranging from sepsis to severe trauma. Each presents the patient with a unique set of problems. Traumatic coagulopathy is the body's inability to form a clot due to one of several causes. It is believed that coagulopathy secondary to trauma is the result of a cascade of hemostatic and immune-inflammatory responses that leave the patient in either a hypercoagulable state or a hypocoagulable state. [24] The scope of this article will focus on hypocoaguable states caused by consumption of clotting factors or dilution of available clotting factors with fluid resuscitation. Consumptive coagulopathy is the result of the body consuming all of its clotting factors in trying to form a fibrin clot or from hemorrhaging clotting factors faster than they can be replaced. This leaves the body with limited or inefficient resources to trigger certain enzymes and factors of the clotting cascade. As a trauma patient progresses through the downward spiral caused by the trauma triad, the body begins to initiate fibrinolysis, a process by which the body destroys fibrin clots through the inappropriate activation of anti-coagulation processes.[12][2]
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