Coagulation Cascade

Coagulation Cascade Poster for instructors and students

Important Points About the Clotting Cascade:

Pathways: The clotting cascade is made up of an intrinsic pathway, extrinsic pathway and a common pathway. The intrinsic and extrinsic pathways merge at factor X/factor 10 to create the common cascade.

Review Videos:

Coagulation Cascade - Ninja Nerd is, hands down, the best lecture source for hemostasis. Instead of just going through a list of clotting factors, he helps you visualize and truly understand the process.
Coagulation Cascade Animation- This is an animated peek into what's actually happening with the coagulation cascade. It's under 3 minutes and is worth a watch no matter where you are in your studying.
Coagulation Cascade and Fibrinolysis - Armando Hasudungan combines good illustrations with clear explanations in this 10 minute video.

Other Resources:

Clotting Cascade Made Easy - Nurse Your Own Way provides an extremely easy to understand explanation of the clotting cascade and it's clinical implications at a nursing level. It also using a similar memorization technique as the one we suggested.
The Coagulation Cascade- Geeky Medics has a good study guide style page on the coagulation cascade including how it related to lab work and anti-clotting medications.

Mnemonics:

Refer to our favorite Ninja Nerd video

In this video, jump to 29:51.

We love the "x marks the spot" method where you draw an 'x' in the middle for factor 10.

The intrinsic pathway involves counting down from 12 (skipping 10 because we already have it on the paper). So factors 12, 11, 9, 8.
The extrinsic pathway is 3+7 which equals 10. Factor 3, factor 7, then factor 10.
The common pathway is 5 x 2 x 1 which equals 10. So factor 5, factor 2 (thrombin), factor 1 (fibrinogen).