Rosemary's Three Stages Of Haemostasis

The human body has approximately 5 liters of blood in circulation at any given time. Therefore, when a blood vessel is ruptured or damaged, as a result of an injury, it is vital that the loss of blood is minimalized. The process that enables this is called haemostasis. In terms of Rosemary’s ‘quite bad’ cut on her finger, as a result of slicing it with a kitchen knife, her body will react quickly by following all three stages of haemostasis. We can assume this as a result of the bleeding taking a while to stop.

The primary stage of healing is called vasoconstriction. This is an immediate reflex of the smooth muscle (tunica media) in the vessel contracting, reducing the diameter of the lumen and therefore diminishing blood loss through Rosemary’s damaged endothelium cells (MediceneNet, 2012). The site of damage in the vessel will have exposed collagen. Thrombocytes adhere to this and begin the process of degranulation, where they release cytoplasmic granules such as serotonin, a vasoconstrictor. …show more content…
The thrombocytes that have undergone the process of degranulation also release Adenosine diphosphate, a substance that promotes more thrombocytes to adhere to each other. The aggregation of these thrombocytes forms a temporary ‘plug’ and, on average, takes around 6 minutes to develop after the damage occurs (Waugh and Grant, 2014). Sometimes, this stage is enough to prevent further bleeding, however, in Rosemary’s case; her bleeding didn’t stop for a while. Therefore we know coagulation had to occur in her damaged finger