Significance of Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation Score in Mortality for Children With Shock

Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is an acquired syndrome characterized by excessive systemic activation of coagulation, resulting in both hemorrhage and thrombosis. DIC can progress rapidly into lifethreatening multiorgan failure. Under normal hemostatic conditions, clot formation and resolution are tightly regulated. In DIC, dysregulated activation of the coagulation system results in a consumptive coagulopathy and microvascular thrombosis. DIC is always a secondary process caused by a variety of underlying disorders (eg, sepsis, trauma, or malignancy), which can cause endothelial tissue damage and procoagulant exposure .

This activates the coagulation cascade, which promotes fibrin production and deposition and consumption of clotting factors. The subsequent consumption of coagulation factors and platelets, inhibition of natural anticoagulants and fibrinolysis, and fibrin deposition result in the clinical picture of DIC: a bleeding diathesis accompanied by microvascular thrombosis that often leads to end-organ damage . The International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis and the Japanese Association for Acute Medicine scoring systems are useful for detection of the DIC in critically ill pediatric patients . The overall incidence of DIC to be 1.2%, using a scoring system comprised of etiologic factors, clinical features, platelet count, prothrombin time, fibrinogen, and fibrin degradation products (FDPs) . The DIC score, easily computed in real-time at the bedside with routine laboratory values, is associated with mortality for children with sepsis andshock.

Diagnosis of DIC through test of the D-dimer. Accordingly, testing for Ddimer or FDPs may be helpful for evulating relationship between DIC score and mortality rate among children with shock .