Dimer Test In The Emergency Department Of An Urban Academic Medical Center

D-dimer is a soluble fibrin degradation product deriving from the plasmin-mediated degradation of cross-linked fibrin. Although this prevalence is similar to that reported in previous research on DVT diagnosis with ultrasound testing ( 69 )( 70 ), it is considerably higher than other studies of outpatients referred for evaluation of suspected DVT ( 16 )( 71 )( 72 )( 73 ). Test performance often varies with patient characteristics and severity of disease.

The advantage of this approach is that all the different kinds of fibrin degradation products will be present in the patient pooled plasma, and a limitation is that an individual patient or specific patient groups (e.g. patients with deep vein thrombosis or patients with disseminated intravascular coagulation) may behave differently.

Although the cutoff levels adopted in the present study for young subjects proved to be very effective, we believe that a refinement in the cutoff levels for elderly patients is advisable to optimize the relationship between an acceptable rate of recurrence and the proportion of anticoagulated patients.

The agreement between the two methods (Liatest D-Dimer assay and Asserachrom DDi assay), by plotting the difference between the two measurements against their mean, is shown in Figure 4 This difference exceeded the 95% confidence limits of agreement in 11 of the 364 patients (3%).

In fact, many treatments can be started, like dietary interventions or treatments for yeast and bacterial overgrowth, with data from non-blood tests. D-dimer tests are requested, along with other laboratory nursing school tests and imaging scans, to help exclude, diagnose, and monitor diseases and conditions that cause hypercoagulability , a tendency to clot inappropriately.

Lichey J, Reschofski I, Dissmann T, et al. Fibrin degradation product D-dimer in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism. However, two factors, the prevalence of DVT in the study population and the choice of reference standard, were significantly associated with D-dimer assay performance.