Refinement and feasibility testing of a manual micro-method for protamine titration

Abstract

Summary Current clinical recommendations for unfractionated heparin (UFH) therapy suggest target APTT ranges should reflect heparin concentrations of 0.2-0.4 IU/ml by protamine titration or 0.35-0.7 IU/m by an anti-Xa assay. Historically, performance of a manual protamine titration assay has been labour intensive and required a large plasma sample. However, recent studies have described difficulties with standardizing anti-Xa assays and demonstrated poor correlation of anti-Xa assays in children. This study aimed to refine and test the feasibility of a modified protamine titration assay using 100 ̄l of plasma. The resultant method produced reliable and repeatable results in adult plasma pool..