[Monitoring blood coagulation]

Standard heparin in therapeutic doses has to be monitored by the activated partial thromboplastin time. There is no need for monitoring of treatment or prophylaxis with low molecular weight heparins. Only specific clinical situations, like renal insufficiency, long-term treatment, pregnancy, high risk of bleeding or thrombosis, small children and an extremely low or high body weight demand determination of anti-factor Xa activities. Monitoring of oral anticoagulant treatment should be done by determination of prothrombin time, values should be given in International Normalized Ratio (INR). It has been shown that monitoring by specialized centers and most probably self monitoring at home by the patient himself are able to optimize treatment.