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HIT in children mainly occurs in paediatric intensive care with diagnostic features and outcomes similar to those seen in adults. HIT cannot be ruled out based on normal platelet counts or occurrence after fewer than 5 days of heparin exposure. Children should be presumed to suffer from HIT based on clinical grounds and treated accordingly (immediate heparin withdrawal and alternative anticoagulation). Alternative anticoagulation with danaparoid, lepirudin and argatroban appears to improve outcomes.

The reference values of the most commonly used parameters in hematology were evaluated in a metaanalysis using practices of a group of major hospitals in Switzerland and in detail review of the literature. Extensive differences of the reference values have been noted being caused mainly by selection of different patient/control collectives. Whenever possible, reference values were separately evaluated for age, gender and race. The reported reference values approximated a Gauss distribution allowing for statistical evaluation accordingly. Due to recent standardization (ICSH and NCCLS), differences caused by instrumentation and preanalytics were found to be of less importance. Our presented validated reference values in hematology should allow for better discrimination of classical hematological disease entities such as an iron deficiency anemia, thalassemia and hemolysis.