Monitoring Of Oral Anticoagulant Therapy Research Articles

Laboratory Monitoring of Oral Anticoagulant Therapy

The safety and success of oral anticoagulant treatment are dependent on laboratory control by the prothrombin time test. Until recently, the therapeutic range in prothrombin ratios of 2.0 to 2.5 resulted in greatly different dosage regimes, because of the lack of standardization of the test, particularly its thromboplastin component. Low-dose warfarin was associated with responsive thromboplastin. In North America and many other countries, a high-dose regime from high international sensitivity index thromboplastin caused more bleeding.

A simplified amidolytic factor X assay for monitoring of oral anticoagulant therapy

Previous studies suggest that chromogenic substrate assays can be considered a suitable method for the maintenance control of oral anticoagulant therapy [l-3]. It seemed of interest to explore whether an amidolytic factor X or factor II assay or both methods may provide an alternative to current tests such as prothrombin time or similar test systems. Moreover, the number of steps in such an assay should be reduced to provide a rapid and economic procedure.