This course will describe the different forms of thrombocytes that can appear in peripheral blood.  

The Thrombocytes play a big role in the coagulation process in the blood. They are produced in the bone marrow and are not really a cell but fragments from the cytoplasm of the Megakaryocyte. One Megakaryocyte can give rise to 6000 thrombocytes. The normal concentration of thrombocytes in peripheral blood is 150-300x10^9/L and they circulate 6-9 days in the blood stream before they are removed by macrophages.