Bleeding disorders is a general term for a wide range of medical problems that lead to poor blood clotting and continuous bleeding. Doctors also refer to this as “coagulopathy,” “abnormal bleeding” and “clotting disorders.”

When someone has a bleeding disorder, he or she has a tendency to bleed longer than the average person. The disorders can result from defects in blood vessels or from abnormalities in the blood itself. The abnormalities may be in blood-clotting factors or in platelets.

Blood clotting (also called coagulation) is the process that controls bleeding by changing blood from a liquid to a solid. It’s a complex process involving as many as 20 different plasma proteins, or blood-clotting factors.

Within seconds of an injury, tiny cells in the blood called platelets bunch together around the wound. Blood proteins, platelets, calcium and other tissue factors react together and form what’s called a clot, which acts like a net over the wound. Over the next several days to weeks, the clot strengthens and then dissolves when the wound is healed.

Normally, a complex chemical process occurs using these clotting factors to form a substance called fibrin that stops bleeding. When certain coagulation factors are deficient or missing, the process doesn’t occur normally.