Objective: To investigate the difference in coagulation screening in heparin anticoagulant therapy between dry-chemistry point of care tests (POCT) and automatic analyzer.
Methods: Blood samples were collected from 44 patients with myocardial infarction or intracranial hemorrhage, 34 males aged 78 +/- 10 and 10 females aged 73 +/- 8, to undergo examination of prothrombin time (PT), international normalized ratio (INR), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), and fibrinogen (Fbg) by dry-chemistry methods with coagulation analyzers of the models CG02 and Hemochron Jr II. The levels of APTT of 30 patients were measured by the bedside with analyzers model Hemochron Jr II, after their anticoagulation samples underwent measurement of the plasma heparin activity with ACL Advance automatic coagulation analyzer; the APTT was determined with STA-R.
Results: The correlation coefficients of PT, INR, APTT, and Fbg between the CG02 and STA-R results were 0.945, 0.966, 0.662, and 0.977 respectively (all P < 0.05). However, t test showed that the levels of PT and INR between these 2 groups were not significant, and the differences in the levels of APTT and Fbg were significant (both P < 0.05). ACL Advance analyzer showed that the heparin activities of 30 samples were 172 approximately 1465 U/L, and the APTT values measured by Hemochron Jr II and STA-R were 87 s +/- 32 s and 90 s +/- 46 s (P < 0.01).
Conclusion: Dry-chemistry POCT is not suitable to report the results of the same patient simultaneously with the automatic analyzer.