Arterial and venous blood sampling is equally applicable for coagulation and fibrinolysis analyses

No consensus exists upon whether arterial and venous blood samples are equivalent when it comes to coagulation analyses. We therefore conducted a comparative cohort study to clarify if arteriovenous differences affect analyses of primary and secondary hemostasis as well as fibrinolysis.

Simultaneous paired blood samplings were obtained from a cannula in the radial artery and an antecubital venipuncture in 100 patients immediately before or one day after thoracic surgery. Analyses of platelet count and aggregation, International Normalized Ratio (INR), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), antithrombin, thrombin time, fibrinogen, D-dimer, rotational thromboelastometry (ROTEM), thrombin generation, prothrombin fragment 1 + 2, and an in-house dynamic fibrin clot formation and lysis assay were performed.

No differences were found between arterial and venous samples for the far majority of parameters. The only differences were found in INR, median (IQR): venous, 1.1 (0.2) vs. arterial, 1.1 (0.2) (p<0.002) and in prothrombin fragment 1 + 2: venous, 289 (209) pmol/L vs. arterial, 279 (191) pmol/L (p<0.002).

The sampling site does not affect the majority of coagulation analyses. Small differences were found for two parameters. Due to numerically very discrete differences, they are of no clinical relevance. In conclusion, the present data suggest that both samples obtained from arterial and venous blood may be applied for analyses of coagulation and fibrinolysis.