I'm not sure I get this. So if you're off anticoagulants, and you go to have lab work done is the question does having blood drawn make you more prone to clots?

Um... well, you DO want your body to clot, you know. That just means that your body and blood are working correctly. I mean, you don't want to bleed out from a papercut. You don't want bruises to keep spreading until your entire body is black and purple. Clots take care of both of those things. Every scab you've ever had is a clot.

With a lot of injuries, like with a puncture from a needle to take blood, you'll wind up with a superficial clot to stop the area from bleeding. That's kind of necessary. OF course, there's a big difference between a superficial clot and a DVT. Docs don't worry about superficial clots (because it means your body is working correctly), but DVTs are a different issue.

I couldn't say if your blood coagubility levels change as a whole when you're injured. With absolutely no scientific knowledge to back me up, I think your blood is able to clot if it needs to to try to repair damage when it needs to. I expect there are dozens of little bumps and dings that your body deals with every day that don't result in DVTs.

I can think of one situation where the coaguability levels change a lot and that would be during late pregnancy and childbirth. Obviously, there will be a higher survival rate among women who don't bleed out during childbirth, so I think the blood clots more easily during that time as a life-saving device. Definitely helpful if you're one of our ancestors giving birth in a sod shanty on the prairie.

As for other times that the body increases your coagubility levels, I couldn't say. Might be an interesting question for your hematologist.

Also some inflammatory diseases and autoimmune diseases can make you more prone to hypercoagulate. So if you've got that in the mix, that can be an issue.

So I think part of the equation is if you're prone to clotting already and the other part is risk factors that would potentially cause clots. In an otherwise healthy person, it seems the risk would be low to develop blood clots from a venus puncture. But I have no medical data to back that up, and I agree with Toss, it may be a question to throw at your doctor to get his take.

Will ask the doctor this week. Funny about giving birth on the prarie. If children are on the horizon, i would want to know how long the hypercoaguability lasts.

My understanding is that if you have a clotting history and are pregnant, you'll sometimes do injections during the pregnancy. Also, they'll often continue with anticoagulation therapy after the birth for weeks/months. Just to get you past that hypercoaguable stage. It depends on the patient and the clotting history, of course.

Whenever you decide to get pregnant or are pregnant, part of your birth plan will be planning how to deal with you postpartum. I believe most women with a clotting history are prescribed warfarin for about two months after childbirth to prevent DVT resulting from delivery and hypercoagulability in the postpartum period.

I had all 3 of my kids pre clot, but I know a close friend of mine that had to do the injections throughout the nine months and postpartum, I think it was 2-3 months after.