Haemostasis
Hemostasis (from Greek hema "blood" and stasis "stasis, stagnation, standstill"; also: hemostasis, stypsis) is a vital process that brings bleeding resulting from injuries to blood vessels to a halt. This prevents excessive leakage of blood from the bloodstream and creates the conditions for wound healing.
Hemostasis must begin sufficiently quickly in the event of an injury to prevent major blood loss. It must be limited to the area of injury and not be falsely triggered by other events such as inflammations or infections.
The most important part in primary hemostasis is played by platelets, which are nucleated and originate from the bone marrow. We find 150'000 - 400'000 of them in the blood per microliter. The number of platelets is often increased in infectious diseases. As a result, a patient has a tendency to thrombus formation and we speak of thrombocytosis. If the platelet count decreases, a thrombocytopenia is present and this can massively disturb primary hemostasis.