The onset of COVID-19 presents many challenges to the medical community. Coagulation entered the fray with the discovery of abnormal clotting in patients with severe COVID-19. Doctors originally thought COVID-19 was a respiratory virus, “albeit a contagious and lethal one with no vaccine or treatment.” However, cases that did not fit the pattern of a respiratory virus …Continue Reading
Q: Our audience is primarily Laboratory Professionals, what message you would have for them? A: I actually started my career working in a hemophilia research lab where I enjoyed learning more of the scientific aspect of the disease. I still miss working in the lab, factor assays were my favorite part. They were like a puzzle and …Continue Reading
The method of thawing a frozen sample in the coagulation lab has a significant effect on testing results. It is imperative that the samples be thawed properly. The preferred method is thawing for 3-5 minutes in a circulating water bath. The thawing time of 3-5 minutes is based on a 1.0 mL vial and may need …Continue Reading
Lot to lot correlations are common in today’s clinical laboratories. As explained in the recent CAP today article, “Differences between reagents and testing systems are known to contribute to test result variability, making crossover studies necessary when using new reagents or implementing new testing systems.”[1] Regulatory and accreditation standards require the lab to evaluate each …Continue Reading
Factor VIII activity can be measured in different ways. Two of the assays used to assess the Factor VIII activity are the one-stage clotting assay and the chromogenic assay. The one-stage clotting assay is still the most widely used. The one stage clotting assay measures the extent a plasma sample corrects the coagulation time of …Continue Reading
Currently the global test used to detect intrinsic factor deficiencies in patients with bleeding is the activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT). The APTT reagent used should be sensitive to a reduction in coagulation factors such as FVIII and FIX that are commonly associated with bleeding. Literature states that it is desirable to have APTT systems …Continue Reading
Laboratories use normal reference ranges (NRRs) to identify whether a test result is within the normal range or outside this range (and to thus identify an abnormal result). The relative false positive to true positive rate increases substantially for rare disorders and is a particular problem with congenital disorders such as protein C, protein S, …Continue Reading
