Cause of bruising needs to be identified

Q. I am a 64-year-old male in reasonably good health for the life I have lived. But in the last five weeks or so, I have had three baseball-sized bruises on my thighs, midway up, for no apparent reason. The first was on the outside of my right thigh, and about two weeks later, one appeared on the inside of my left thigh. Now I have one on the inside of my right thigh. Do you have any idea as to the cause?

A. Bruising is generally the result of injury - even minor trauma, such as hoisting a heavy box and resting it on your thighs. The process doesn't appear to cause damage, yet it can be extreme enough for blood to clot beneath the surface of the skin and result in a bruise.

Aspirin, Advil, naproxen, Motrin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories can also cause contusions, as can physician-prescribed corticosteroids and prednisone.

Recap your activity before the first bruising. Did you lean into a porch railing, over the hood of a car to work on it or carry debris from your basement up a set of stairs? If so, you may have a harmless cause you can identify.

If you are on new medication, ask your physician whether it carries a side effect of bruising. If not and your bruising is spontaneous, speak with him or her about getting a blood work-up. In this way, disorders such as von Willebrand's disease and hemophilia can be ruled out. These hereditary disorders are marked by slow blood clotting that can result in nosebleeds, excessive bleeding of the gums and more.

Another possibility is the aging process. As we get older, our bodies take longer to heal, from even minor injuries. We also tend to have thinner skin, which causes what were once trivial bumps and scrapes to turn into larger, more serious cuts, bruises and tears. If your health checks out (as I suspect it will), you may simply need to be more cautious and try to avoid getting hurt.

© 2009, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.