[Laboratory standardization and quality control in anticoagulant therapy]

Standardisation and quality control are now available for the laboratory tests which are needed to control the blood levels of anticoagulants. The most important cause for variation in results between different laboratories is the use of different types of thromboplastin. The British standards are based on the use of a national reagent with a national system of reporting supported by quality control with lyophilised plasma and thromboplastin preparations. It offers a model which has been adopted at Tygerberg Hospital, and could be used to standardise anticoagulant therapy in this country. Human brain thromboplastin is preferred to the commercially available rabbit preparations. For the first time, as far as we know, a phenol-saline extract of baboon brain thromboplastin was examined. Preliminary results indicate that it compares well with human brain extracts.