Professor Fiona Newall is Director of Nursing Research at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and has a special interest in anticoagulation in children. If you think that the only patients in a hospital that need anticoagulation are old people then you should watch this talk from DFTB18.

The coagulation cascade that we spent so many sleepless nights learning about (and subsequently forgetting) is fundamentally different in children in terms of developmental haemostasis.

Unlike adults who need anticoagulation, primarily for atrial fibrillation or mechanical valves, children may need them following complex surgeries such as the Fontan procedure or prevention of DVTs with indwelling lines.  Here Fiona takes us through some of the complex interplay between patients, their environment and the medication itself.