Hello Nadia.
Really lovely to hear from you. I really hope you are enjoying the course.
Practically speaking I would use PT and aPTT to assess secondary coagulation in practice. These would be the methods that are most widely available.
There are different analysers that perform viscoelastic testing, including the ROTEM®, TEG® and Sonoclot®, results of which are not directly comparable (McMichael et al 2014). Even the same type of analyser does not yield comparable results in different institutions when subjected to standardized testing (Goggs et al 2018). To add confusion, each company uses specific terminology for the technique and results, which is only applicable to their analyser, although the provided results provide similar information. With the ROTEM® , the technique is called thrombelastrometry and with the TEG® analysers, the technique is called thrombelastography (abbreviated to TEG; the latter should only be used for results obtained from TEG® analysers and not those from the ROTEM® or Sonoclot®).
Generally speaking we have most information in veterinary medicine regarding TEG®. If there was the option to use thromboelastography then I would use that! The problem is that machines that perform this sort of testing are not widely used in practice (although commercially available). In time I am sure TEG will become more widely available.
What are you currently using?
Scott 🙂
