Incidence of thrombocytopenia in an acute care hospital.

Our recent survey recorded thrombocytopenia in 1 per 105.5 adults inpatients in an acute care hospital. Less than 30% of these patients demonstrated any bleeding manifestations. The high pickup rate of asymptomatic thrombocytopenia is a spin off from the current practice of recording the platelet count with every full blood count request. 46.6% of our thrombocytopenic patients had an underlying infection. The high association between thrombocytopenia and infection justifies a search for an infective process when one encounters an unexpected or unexplained reduction in the platelet count.