Dad has Heparin dependent Antibodies - any advice?

[rose1999]

Hello everyone
As you will know from my 'platelets' post, Dad has been in hospital for a while now with dreadful bruising and bleeding due to very low platelets.

Immunoglobulin has raised his platelets from 1 to 50, but we don't know how long that will last. 

Today they told him tests have shown he has heparin dependent antibodies - does anyone know what this means and how it wil affect his day to day life?  I didn't get change to speak to anyone as he was moved off the ward and into dialysis and we went with him as we only get an hour visiting and travel a total of over 3 hours so we want to spend time with him when we are there. 

I've looked it up on the web but it's all technical stuff, does anyone know what it means in layman's terms - what should we do, what can we do?  Does it mean he can't have heparin and if so how will that affect his dialysis as he has to use a line because his veins are too poor. Is there an alternative to heparin?

He also has badly blocked arteries and the surgeon says there's an 80% chance of a fatal heart attack if nothig is done, a heart bypass has been ruiled out as too risky, last week he said they may consider angioplasty (although last year they said that was not possible) but now Dad has this does that mean angioplasty is not possible (I believe it uses a lot of heparin).

Sorry I'm asking so many questions but I want to go back in the morning asking the right questions and if anyone knows what I should be asking it is my good friends here.  Thank you.

[monrein]

My understanding, from very preliminary research on this, is that he can still have heparin in certain instances, like surgery for example, because there aren't all that many alternatives to heparin available, but they have to be very cautious and be on the lookout for thromboses or clots which can be very dangerous.  One article suggested aspirin therapy prior, most likely so they can use less heparin.

http://ukidney.com/

This site is free to register on and you can directly ask a doctor there if you like.  I'll keep trying to find stuff on this but for now I'm off to D.