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Bethesda Titer

Cassandra McGeachy, Louisiana Coagulation, asks, I am trying to evaluate a set of FVIII inhibitor results and I am not sure what to call it. My patient + normal pool on my Bethesda assay yields a 23% FVIII and the next 4 serial dilutions bounce around between 15 to 19% instead of giving a higher […]

Bleeding Disorders

NSAIDS Raise Bleeding Risk Post-MI

Heartwire reviews a Februay 24 JAMA report indicating that AMI patients on DAPT who use NSAIDs double their risk of bleeding and secondary cardiovascular events. Read about it in Medscape.

Anticoagulant Therapy

World Thrombosis Day, 2015

The second annual World Thrombosis Day is Tuesday, October 13, 2015. Be sure to read about this important event through our partner, Precision BioLogic Inc. both on the ISTH and the Precision BioLogic Inc web site.

Open Position, Boston Children’s Hospital

Please see the attached Boston Children’s Hospital announcement for the open position of coagulation laboratory specialist, posted on behalf of Carlo Brugnara, MD, Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School Department of Laboratory Medicine.

Does Acetaminophen Interfere with the VerifyNow Asprin Test?

From Thomas Gage, MD, Lahey Medical Center. Greetings, I have a patient with a VerifyNow Aspirin test showing some inhibition. The patient had exposure to clopidogrel and acetaminophen, but not aspirin. So now I’m trying to figure out if acetaminophen can interfere with this test, and I’m getting conflicting opinions. Because the VerifyNow Aspirin test […]

Antiplatelet Therapy

Platelet Function Testing in the OR

From Jim Turner: Hey Mr Fritsma! Great site and I really like the longer hair! I now work for TriMedX. I am one of their clinical engineers here in Birmingham at St Vincent’s Medical Center. I (and others) are having a problem with this platelet activity instrument called the VerifyNow. The heaters on these things […]

Antiplatelet Therapy

Mixing Studies on Anticoagulation

From Dr. King: We are encountering with increasing frequency requests from hematologists to perform mixing studies on patients that are known to be on some form of anticoagulation. My question is regarding the utility of doing such testing. Another aspect to the question is whether you can do testing for a prolonged PTT when the […]

Anticoagulant Therapy

D-dimer Questionnaire

Remember that D-dimer questionnaire link that we asked you to post on Fritsma Factor in early November of 2014?: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1IVMqgIsZRN_rqbv2PdhPoerRB6UERXdEuCi0Czr-7m0/viewform?usp=send_form. Well, we had a look at the responses and greater than 90% have come from Europe/Australia. Seems that North Americans don’t do D-dimers! We are keeping the link open indefinitely. It would be good to […]

Victor Marder

Thanks to Elaine Benoit, Precision BioLogic Inc, for passing along the sad news that Victor Marder, MD, an International Society for Thrombosis and Haemostasis founder, passed away quietly on January 29, 2015. Dr. Marder was 80 years of age. Please select Victor Marder Death Notice for Dr. Marder’s obituary.

Platelet Function Controls

A colleague asked George, can you please suggest a commercial normal and abnormal control one can use to test an assay that claims to distinguish normal from abnormal platelet function. Alternatively, suggest also please for preparing controls for research testing purposes. Specifically, how can we go about preparing a normal activity platelet control and an […]

Platelet Function Testing

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George Fritsma is a medical laboratory scientist, educator, and author. George is a member of the International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis, the International Society for Laboratory Hematology, and the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science.

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