Future directions in viscoelastic hemostatic assay usage in bleeding patients

Severe bleeding and coagulopathy remain major challenges in perioperative care, particularly in cardiac surgery, trauma, and obstetrics. Viscoelastic hemostatic assays (VHAs) have emerged as rapid, point-of-care tools to assess coagulation, but their evidence base and clinical integration remain inconsistent. This review summarizes current evidence, highlights assay limitations, and outlines opportunities for refinement.

VHAs outperform conventional plasma-based tests in turnaround time and functional assessment of coagulation. International guidelines increasingly recommend their use in patient blood management, yet two multicenter randomized trials have been conducted, yielding contrasting results in cardiac surgery and trauma. Major challenges include heterogeneity in platforms, assay design, activation methods, and output parameters, as well as variability in algorithm adherence and subjective interpretation. Device discontinuations further threaten evidence transferability. Two assay parameters - fibrinogen contribution to clot strength and extrinsically activated clotting time - are particularly relevant, but both require refinement to improve diagnostic precision and therapeutic guidance.

VHAs are valuable tools for bleeding management but remain limited by platform heterogeneity, incomplete assay specificity, and modest predictive accuracy. Future research should focus on assay standardization, dual platelet inhibition in fibrinogen assays, and improved discrimination of coagulation factor deficiencies to enable reliable, widely applicable clinical algorithms.