Hemophilia is a condition in which the body loses its ability to create blood clots, thereby resulting in the risk of excessive bleeding even from the most minor of wounds. This then leads to an increased risk of internal bleeding, which can be fatal. There are two main types of the condition, namely hemophilia A and hemophilia B. The following are the causes, symptoms, and complications, which determine the treatment:
1. Symptoms
Depending on the level of clotting factors, some symptoms of hemophilia will vary. They can be as follows.
- Excessive bleeding from injuries and wounds that do not stop. These include surgical wounds, bites, abrasions, cuts, etc.
- Numerous deep bruises
- Unusually excessive bleeding after injections and vaccinations
- Blood in stools and urine
- Nosebleeds with no cause
- Pain and stiffness in your joints
- Swollen joints and inability to bend them
- Previously healed wounds may open up again and bleed profusely
If the injured part is your brain, the condition is very severe as a simple knock or bump on the head can cause excessive bleeding in your brain. Symptoms of internal bleeding in your brain include:
- Seizures and convulsions
- Weakness and clumsiness
- Sleepiness
- Lethargy
- Double vision
- Repeated puking and nausea
- Prolonged headache with severe pain
2. Causes
When your body bleeds due to a variety of reasons, blood cells group up near the wound and attempt to stem the flow of blood outside the body or into an organ. For people who have hemophilia, this process is prevented by the lack of certain clotting factors.
The causes are:
- Hemophilia is mostly inherited and 70% of the patients are affected by the disorder due to genetics. It occurs due to a defect in the clotting factor gene. Females are carriers of the gene but are less likely to have hemophilia than men. For a girl to have hemophilia, both the X chromosomes must be affected, which is rare and for a boy, only the one X chromosome needs to be affected, which is much more common.
- A spontaneous genetic mutation.
- The condition may or may not occur with pregnancy.
- It may or may not occur with cancer, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune conditions.
3. Complications
- Infection
Patients with hemophilia require frequent blood transfusions. While there is a huge necessity to import healthier blood, blood transfusions can increase the risk of acquiring diseases and infections carried by the donor. However, due to modern technology, the screening of donated blood has made it much safer to go ahead with this procedure.
- Adverse reactions
When the natural clotting factor of the body is lacking in its function, the body partially or fully loses the ability to form blood clots. In these cases, treatments are given to enable clotting factors. Sometimes, the immune system can react negatively to this, causing inhibitors that nullify the effects of the treatment.
- Deep internal bleeding
When you experience hemophilia in parts of your body that are hard to see and diagnose, it becomes a major problem. In places like muscles, there can be severe swelling, which in turn causes numbness or pain.
- Damage to joints
Internal bleeding can pressurize the joints and cause a lot of unbearable pain. If this pain is not attended to, serious damage may be caused to the joints, resulting in arthritis or the destruction of the bone.