Congenital afibrinogenaemia.

A case of congenital afibrinogenaemia in a young female child is described. She had haemorrhagic tendency since birth in the form of markedly prolonged umbilical bleeding and easy bruising afterwards. Two of her brothers had bleeding tendencies, one died shortly after birth due to uncontrollable umbilical bleeding and other died at the age of 12 years from internal haemorrhage. The family study indicates the mode of inheritance to be probably autosomal recessive. The principal laboratory findings are complete non-coagulability of blood, grossly abnormal coagulation tests, zero ESR value, failure to detect fibrinogen by heat coagulation or chemical precipitation tests and biuret reaction and correction of thrombin time after fibrinogen infusion.