Blood platelets commonly called megakaryocytes are one of the three tiny cellular components of the blood which helps in the stoppage of bleeding.. Other cellular components of blood are the red blood cells and white blood cells. All the cellular components bathe in the plasma.

Nearly half a billion blood platelets are being formed in the bone marrow every day. These play a primary role in the formation of blood clot. Here I would like to define the two common terms related to the platelet plug formation when the blood vessel in injured.

*  Adhesion means sticking of blood platelets with the wall of the bleeding vessel.

*  Aggregation means sticking of the platelets with each other.

Normally, in the circulating blood, platelets keep on flowing without any adhesion or aggregation. However, injury to the wall of blood vessel is the point when blood platelets start clinging to the injured part of the vessel wall. At the same time the platelets aggregate with one another and completely seal the opening which helps in arresting the bleeding from the specific site. We call these aggregates as ‘haemostatic plugs’.

Blood platelets can also be activated in the presence of atherosclerosis where the disease itself damages the intimal layer of the blood vessel. So, platelets cling to this damaged layer of the vessel wall and results in the formation of platelet plug by the process of adhesion and aggregation. Eventually thrombus is formed when the coagulation factors come into play. So, blood platelets are responsible for most of the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events occurring in the human body.

Anti platelets drugs are used as blood thinners in the high risk patients. Their basic role is to decrease the activity of the platelets in the circulating blood.

While using anti platelet drugs, role of Impact-R cannot be ignored because it monitors the response to the anti platelet drugs with high accuracy and is very sensitive in all such tests. So, over treatment or under treatment can be easily detected and dealt with accordingly. Presently it is being used for the research purposes but can be used clinically also.