Thromboelastometry and Thrombelastography Analysis under Normal Physiological Conditions - Systematic Review

Background: Studies investigating thromboelastometry or thrombelastography analyses in a physiological context are scattered and not easy to access. Objective: To systematically retrieve and describe published reports studying healthy subjects and targeting at the correlation of ROTEM (R) and TEG (R) measurements with conventional parameters of hemostasis. Methods: Systematic Review: Papers were searched in Medline, Scopus and the Science Citation Index database. Reference lists of included studies and of reviews were screened. To be included papers had to report ROTEM or TEG data on healthy subjects. Two reviewers screened papers for inclusion, read full texts of potentially relevant papers, and extracted data of included papers. Results: Searches identified 1,721 records of which 1,713 were either excluded immediately or after reading the full text. The remaining 8 studies enrolled 632 subjects. The association of conventional parameters of hemostasis with ROTEM and with TEG was investigated in one and two studies, respectively. Overall correlation was limited and ranged from 0.0 to 0.40 (total thrombus generation vs. fibrinogen; clotting time INTEM vs. activated partial thromboplastin time). Conclusions: Studies assessing the relationship between thromboelastometry or thromboelastography analyses and conventional parameters of hemostasis in healthy subjects remains scarce, and correlations are limited. Further research is needed to understand the physiology of thromboelastometry and thromboelastography parameters. (C) 2017 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg