Prediction of bleeding diathesis in patients undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass during cardiac surgery: Viscoelastic measures versus routine coagulation test

Background: Severe hemorrhagic tendency often complicates cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) in cardiac surgery. In this study, we compared the effectiveness of thromboelastography (TEG), Sonoclot (SCT), and routine coagulation test (RCT) in the prediction of coagulation defects. Methods : Forty-three patients undergoing cardiac surgery with CPB were included. Blood for RCT, TEG, and SCT profiles was sampled before systemic heparinization and after protamine administration. Clinically significant bleeding was defined as chest tube drainage in excess of 100 ml/h for 3 consecutive hours or 300 ml/h in 1 h. All coagulation parameters obtained before and after CPB w ere compared. The sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, false positive, and false negative rate were also calculated and compared. Results : All coagulation tests were within normal range except higher partial thromboplastin time. Variables which were significantly different from those before CPB included platelet count, fibrinogen level, prothrombin time, and thrombin time in RCT, a angle and maximum amplitude in TEG, and R ₂ and peak time in SCT. In the TEG tracing, all variables had high sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy (average 85.4%, 83%, and 83.5% respectively) and low false positive and negative rate (12.5% and 5% respectively). Although SCT had high sensitivity (76.3%) and low false negative rate (6.5%), its specificity and accuracy were all under 50%. Conclusions : Our data demonstrated that the TEG monitoring is a useful tool for detecting post-CPB bleeding diathesis and can provide much predictive information. RCT and SCT are of limited value because of higher rate of unreliable results.