Your doctor may use this test, which checks the level of D-dimer in your blood, to figure out whether you might have a blood clot. With DVT, you have a clot deep in one of your veins, usually in your legs, and it can lead to serious problems.
But you can get high levels of D-dimer in your blood if you have a major clot like with deep vein thrombosis ( DVT). Normally, with a little time, it goes away. One of those leftovers is called D-dimer. So your body takes a series of steps in the other direction and breaks the clot down.Īt the end of all that, you have some leftover substances floating around in your blood - like how you’d have wood dust all over after a building project. Once the bleeding stops, you don’t need the clot anymore. It’s a normal part of healing - without it, you’d keep bleeding and have a much more serious problem to deal with.
When you get a cut, your body takes a bunch of steps to make your blood clump up. A D-dimer test is a blood test that can be used to help rule out the presence of a serious blood clot.
