title: Prediction of bleeding diathesis in patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass during cardiac surgery: viscoelastic measures versus routine coagulation test.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Severe hemorrhagic tendency often complicates cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) in cardiac surgery. In this study, we compared the effectiveness of thromboelastography (TEG), Sonoclot (SCT), and routine coagulation test (RCT) in the prediction of coagulation defects.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-three patients undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB were included. Blood for RCT, TEG, and SCT profiles was sampled before systemic heparinization and after protamine administration. Clinically significant bleeding was defined as chest tube drainage in excess of 100 ml/h for 3 consecutive hours or 300 ml/h in 1 h. All coagulation parameters obtained before and after CPB were compared. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, false positive, and false negative rate were also calculated and compared.
  
  
  RESULTS
  All coagulation tests were within normal range except higher partial thromboplastin time. Variables which were significantly different from those before CPB included platelet count, fibrinogen level, prothrombin time, and thrombin time in RCT, alpha angle and maximum amplitude in TEG, and R2 and peak time in SCT. In the TEG tracing, all variables had high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy (average 85.4%, 83%, and 83.5% respectively) and low false positive and negative rate (12.5% and 5% respectively). Although SCT had high sensitivity (76.3%) and low false negative rate (6.5%), its specificity and accuracy were all under 50%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our data demonstrated that the TEG monitoring is a useful tool for detecting post-CPB bleeding diathesis and can provide much predictive information. RCT and SCT are of limited value because of higher rate of unreliable results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anesthesiology, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, R.O.C.
authors.forename: R L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Shih
authors.forename: Y G
authors.initials: YG
authors.lastname: Cherng
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: J T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D001780:Blood Coagulation Tests; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures; D002315:Cardiopulmonary Bypass; D005260:Female; D006474:Hemorrhagic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013916:Thrombelastography