Bleeding and clotting disorders in pediatric liver disease.

The coagulopathy of liver disease in pediatric patients presents an unusual set of challenges. Little pediatric data have been published, so this review is based largely on adult studies. There is a precarious balance between deficiencies of clotting factors and anticoagulation factors in liver disease that result in abnormal prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) tests that would suggest a bleeding tendency, yet the patients can form a clot and are at risk of thromboembolic disease. Attention has centered on thromboelastography and thrombin-generation assays to clarify the patient's ability to control bleeding, but these tests are not routinely available to many treating physicians.