Minimum numbers of fresh whole blood and plasma samples from patients and healthy subjects for ISI calibration of CoaguChek and RapidPointCoag monitors

The international sensitivity index (ISI) calibration of point-of-care-test (POCT) prothrombin time (PT) whole blood monitors is complex, requiring manual PT testing of 60 patients' and 20 healthy subjects' plasma samples. The possibility of reducing these numbers was studied by a Monte Carlo Bootstrap study for 2 POCT PT systems. For reduced sample numbers, this consisted of 50, 000 calibrations using whole blood and plasma samples tested on the monitors with manual PT testing of plasma samples from the same blood donations. There was little effect on mean ISI by reduction of sample numbers to a total of 7, but there was progressively less certainty regarding the reliability of the calibration. Precision of the calibrations and international normalized ratio deviation were not affected markedly by reducing numbers to half. As ISI calibration with the 2 POCT systems was less precise than conventional manual testing, for maximum confidence, reduction of numbers is not advised