By far the most common form of pulmonary embolism is a thromboembolism, which occurs when a blood clot, generally a venous thrombus, becomes dislodged from its site of formation an...
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Coagucheck
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Just a heads up that I had a bad experience with a Coagucheck machine.
My doctor has been using a Coagucheck machine in her office to regulate my INR for the last 4 months. I've been having some chest pain problems and on Monday she tested my INR (2.1) and then sent me for a CT scan. The CT scan results were bad and I was sent to the Emergency ward at the hospital where, 4 hours after my doctor's blood test on Coagucheck, they tested my INR as 1.5, which meant the readings from the machine in her office are off. My old clots haven't been absorbed at all and there is a possibility I've had new PEs (one radiologist says yes there are 2 new PEs, the other radiologist thinks they're old ones). I stayed in the hospital for 2 days and was released. I have to re-start 6 months of anticoagulation therapy from scratch. This time I'm using the injections and avoiding oral anticoagulants. My advice is to be careful with Coagucheck. It's convenient, but maybe don't rely on it 100% and get a double control with a real blood test in a lab every so often. (Also, there is someone in this group whose PEs weren't reabsorbed at all and had their anticoagulation extended. Can't remember who that was. If that person reads this, I'm wondering how it's going now?) Posted on 06/21/08, 03:06 pm |
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Good advice, Flip. My insurance covers the Coagucheck and I'm thinking of getting one since I'm still doing INR venous draws every 3-4 days to once a week. I can only do the vein draw in one arm due the clot in my other arm (no more vein draws allowed in that arm) so my one good arm is taking a beating, although the lab tech said she could do it from my hand vs the inside of the elbow to give me a break. Anyway, I thought I'd check with my doc to see if she'd mind if I supplemented the venous draws with the home checks. She's kind of conservative, so we'll see what she says. 
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