Editorial
Today we are pleased to send you our digital Newsletter which aims to provide you with some important ECAT information and relevant articles in the fields of quality control and/ or laboratory diagnosis in thrombosis & haemostasis.
Enjoy reading.
Petra van Velp
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ECAT Participants' Meeting
Because it is uncertain what the situation regarding COVID-19 will be in the autumn, and given the possibility that many people may not have received permission to travel, we have decided to postpone our Participants’ Meeting again.
This means that the Participants’ Meeting scheduled for 18-19 November will be cancelled.
The next ECAT Participants’ Meeting will be organised in 2022.
We will inform you as soon as we know new dates and agenda for this.
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Webinar
As an alternative to the Participants’ Meeting, ECAT is now planning to organise a webinar in November 2021. We are currently working on the date and programme, and hope to be able to inform you shortly after the summer in more detail.
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Save / Submit results
In the recent Participants’ Questionnaire (see also this Newsletter) several participants indicated that they would like to have the ability to modify survey results if they observed a mistake in results submitted, up until the closing date of the survey. This option is already available.
After entering your results (and other information required) you have two choices.
You can save or submit your results. In the right top corner of the web form you can see these two buttons (see figure).
If you select Save your results are saved to the database, but you are still able to modify any information till the closing date of the survey.
If you select Submit results, these become Read Only. At the moment you select Submit the following message will appear:
If you do not want, as yet, to make your result Read Only, you can select Cancel at this stage and save the results. If you are sure you wish to submit your results, you select OK.
From the time when the survey is closed, all results saved will also be put into the Read Only format. This means that the results saved will also be included in the survey evaluation.
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ECAT Information:
Emicizumab pilot study
In Autumn 2020 a pilot study was performed on the laboratory testing of emicizumab, a bispecific factor IXa- and factor X-directed antibody. This antibody is developed to bring together factor IXa and factor X without the need of factor VIII. It is therefore able to restore blood coagulation in patients with haemophilia A.
This pilot study consisted of two parts. Part I investigated the inter-laboratory variability for the quantitative measurement of emicizumab, while part II investigated the interference of emicizumab in a range of different coagulation test. In the previous newsletter we gave a summary of the results of part I of this pilot study. Now we report on the results of part II. Read more
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ECAT Information:
Participants' Questionnaire
Between April 20th and May 10th we sent out a questionnaire to participants concerning some general aspects of our services, asking for suggestions for ways to improve our services, suggestions for drawing up new parameters, and requesting a general rating of our external quality assurance programme. The questionnaire was sent out to about 1500 participants, of whom some 291 participants completed the survey. The results of this questionnaire give us a good insight into the opinions of our participants. Read more
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Literature Highlights:
Recent publications
Below we list some interesting recent publications in the field of thrombosis and haemostasis, and laboratory diagnostics. Because of the enormous number of publications we have limited our reporting to just a small list of interesting publications. It is not our intention to provide you with a complete overview. We hope this list supports you in your awareness of interesting publications.
VITT
- Greinacher A, Thiele T, Warkentin TE, Weisser K, Kyrle PA, Eichinger S. Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia after ChAdOx1 nCov-19 Vaccination. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2021. Published April 9, 2021.
- Handtke, S., M. Wolff, C. Zaninetti, J. Wesche, L. Schonborn, K. Aurich, et al., A Flow cytometric assay to detect platelet activating antibodies in VITT after ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vaccination. Blood, 2021. DOI: 10.1182/blood.2021012064
- Vayne, C., J. Rollin, Y. Gruel, C. Pouplard, H. Galinat, O. Huet, et al., PF4 Immunoassays in Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. N Engl J Med, 2021. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2106383
If you are interested to learn more about Vaccine-Induced Immune Thrombotic Trombocytopenia we recommend to visit the following website: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-vaccine-induced-immune-thrombotic-thrombocytopenia-vitt. Here also information about the laboratory diagnosis of VITT can be found.
Laboratory testing
- Mukhopadhyay, T., A. Subramanian, H.P. Pati and R. Saxena, Characterization of analytical errors in thromboelastography interpretation. Pract Lab Med, 2021; 23: e00196.
- Siriez, R., J.M. Dogne, R. Gosselin, J. Laloy, F. Mullier and J. Douxfils, Comprehensive review of the impact of direct oral anticoagulants on thrombophilia diagnostic tests: Practical recommendations for the laboratory. Int J Lab Hematol, 2021; 43: 7-20.
- Favaloro, E.J., S. Mohammed, D. Donikian, M. Kondo, S. Hamdam, N. Hocker, et al., Effect of sample heat inactivation on test levels of HIT-IgG(PF4-H) detected by the ACL AcuStar. Thromb Res, 2021; 200: 12-15.
- Hamer, H.M., A.K. Stroobants, R. Bavalia, G.A.E. Ponjee, F.A. Klok, T. van der Hulle, et al., Diagnostic accuracy of four different D-dimer assays: A post-hoc analysis of the YEARS study. Thromb Res, 2021; 201: 18-22.
Quality
- Badrick, T., Biological variation: Understanding why it is so important? Pract Lab Med, 2021; 23: e00199.
- Dorgalaleh, A., E.J. Favaloro, M. Bahraini and F. Rad, Standardization of Prothrombin Time/International Normalized Ratio (PT/INR). Int J Lab Hematol, 2021; 43: 21-28.
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Upcoming Events
XXIX ISTH and 67th SSC
17-21 July 2021, Virtual congress,
website
50th Annual Scientific Meeting ISEH
26-29 August 2021, Virtual congress,
website
ESC Congress 2021
27-30 August 2021, Virtual congress,
website
2021 AACC Annual Meeting
26-30 September 2021, Atlanta, USA,
website
For more events, please have a look into our Calendar.
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