Your provider will let you know how he or she would like to receive the results. If you are using an at-home test kit, you will need to review your results with your provider. At-home devices are small and lightweight. Place the instrument or test strip into a device that calculates the results. ![]() Collect a drop of blood and place it onto a test strip or other special instrument.Use a small needle to puncture your fingertip.During this test, you or your provider will: If you are taking warfarin, your provider may recommend you test your blood regularly using an at-home PT/INR test kit. This usually takes less than five minutes.Ī fingertip test may be done in a provider's office or in your home. You may feel a little sting when the needle goes in or out. After the needle is inserted, a small amount of blood will be collected into a test tube or vial. However, blood samples may also be obtained from indwelling intravenous lines when necessary.The test may be done on a blood sample from a vein or a fingertip.Ī health care professional will take a blood sample from a vein in your arm, using a small needle. Standard percutaneous phlebotomy is the recommended method used to collect venous blood samples. Coagulation tests must be performed using plasma samples and not serum as clotting factors get removed in serum preparations. Although point-of-care devices have been shown to underestimate hemostatic abnormality, point-of-care devices are generally reliable in non-emergency settings. ![]() With point-of-care devices, monitoring anticoagulation therapy can take place at thrombosis centers, primary care provider offices, and even by the patients themselves. With increased prescribing of vitamin K-antagonists (VKAs) like warfarin, point-of-care devices have also been more convenient for patients and general practitioners to monitor medication effectiveness. POC devices are of great value in the emergency and operating room settings where clinical diagnosis and intervention are time-sensitive. However, due to the high turnaround time of up to 90 minutes, point-of-care (POC) devices, with a turn-around time of approximately 5 minutes, are becoming more desirable. Standard laboratory coagulation-based testing has traditionally been used to obtain measurements of PT to ensure reliable results. The INR represents the ratio of the patient's PT divided by a control PT value obtained by using an international reference thromboplastin reagent developed by the WHO. Due to this variability, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the international normalized ratio (INR) and has become the standard reporting format for PT results. Many different preparations of thromboplastin reagents are available which can give different PT results even when using the same plasma. PT measures the time, in seconds, for plasma to clot after adding thromboplastin, (a mixture of tissue factor, calcium, and phospholipid) to a patient's plasma sample. ![]() More specifically, PT is used to evaluate the extrinsic and common pathways of coagulation, which would detect deficiencies of factors II, V, VII, and X, and low fibrinogen concentrations. Prothrombin time (PT) is one of several blood tests routinely used in clinical practice to evaluate the coagulation status of patients.
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