Splinter hemorrhage

Splinter hemorrhage

Splinter haemorrhages are tiny lines that run vertically under nails. At first they are usually plum-coloured, but then darken to brown or black in a couple of days. In certain conditions (in particular, infective endocarditis), clots can start shooting off (e.g. from the heart valve affected) and find their way into interesting parts of the body. If this happens in the finger, it can cause damage to the tiny blood vessels and then a splinter haemorrhage.

Unfortunately, there are a number of other cases for splinter haemorrhages. They could be due to hitting the nail ("trauma"), a sign of inflammation in blood vessels all around the body ("systemic vasculitis"), or they could be where a bit of cholesterol has got lodged in the finger's capillaries. Even if a patient does have infective endocarditis, probably 5 in every 6 patients won't have splinter haemorrages.


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