The next abstract from EAST tackles the question of how we can treat platelets that don’t work right in trauma patients. The literature on using platelet transfusions in patients who are taking anti-platelet agents is getting fairly clear: they don’t work. But what about for platelets that don’t work right due to traumatic hemorrhage?

The trauma group at Penn attacked this problem by performing a prospective study at their Level I trauma center. They investigated platelet function using thromboelastography (TEG) with platelet mapping on trauma patients admitted to the intensive care unit over a two year period. They analyzed platelet function and counts at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 hours after admission. Platelet function in patients given platelets during any of the intervals were compared to those who were not. Outcomes studied were improvement in platelet function and mortality.

Here are the factoids:

• A total of 93 patients were entered into the study
• About half (57%) had platelet dysfunction detected by TEG
• Mortality was not different between the groups
• Neither platelet count nor function improved with transfusion

The authors concluded that platelet dysfunction is common in these patients and that platelet transfusions do not appear to restore platelet function.

My comment: This abstract is a bit hard to follow. Hopefully the manuscript will have more detailed tables that break down which patients got platelets and at what times. It appears that patients could have gotten platelets at various times (any, all, or none) after admission to the ICU, and that pre- and post-transfusion TEG runs were analyzedfor each. It’s also not clear if every patient with dysfunction got a transfusion.

The most obvious issue here is that the total number of patients is small, and the numbers getting platelets at each time interval is even smaller (10-49). The statistical power of such a study is very low. It’s not surprising that no significant differences could be detected. This means that failing to see significance doesn’t means it’s not necessarily there, just that many more patients are needed. So it’s hard to buy into the assertion that platelet transfusions don’t matter.

Here are my questions/comments for the presenter:

1. Why didn’t all patients get platelets? From the table, it looks like nearly all patients had significant dysfunction (defined as MAadp < 40mm) until the end of the 24 hour study period. It looks like some selection bias is possible if there was no defined protocol for giving transfusions to those who had an abnormal TEG.
2. Is your study sufficiently powered to draw the conclusion it did? The number of patients seems small overall, and doing measurements serially every 3 hours would seem to further weaken the statistics. Please comment on your choice of analysis and how likely you are to actually be able to detect significance.
3. Be sure to clarify the details of when platelets were given and why, how many measurements were taken and when, and exact patient numbers. These are not clear in the abstract due to length limitations.

This paper is very interesting and I look forward to its presentation.

Reference: Platelet infusions do not correct trauma induced platelet dysfunction. EAST Annual Assembly abstract #24, 2020.