ECAT International Symposium 2010

On 10 – 12 November 2010 the 7th ECAT Participants’ Meeting was held in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Most of the lectures are available in the educational part of the CLOT-ED section on the ECAT website. To access the educational part you can Login Here .

More information about all lectures given at the ECAT symposium 2010: presentation overview

On Wednesday November 10 we started with a wet workshop on Platelet Function testing. Twenty participants took part in this workshop.  Three companies (Kordia Life Sciences, Multiplate and Siemens) kindly supported the workshop and provided four devices: the Chronolog whole blood aggregometer, Accumetrics VerifyNow, PFA-100 and the Multiplate.  It was a challenge to organise such a workshop using fresh whole blood from 8 different patients.

   

  

 
 

 

   
Platelet workshop                                               Dr. Hackeng and Dr. Eikenboom  

We wish to thank Dr. Eikenboom from the Leiden University Medical Center for his wonderful contribution to this workshop by recruiting interesting patients and performing the blood collection just before the start of the workshop.  Together with Dr Hackeng from the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein, he providedexcellent support during the workshop.  During the symposium Dr. Hackeng gave a comprehensive report on the outcome of the workshop.  A summary of this presentation is available in the educational part of the CLOT-ED section on the ECAT website.

The next morning two separate courses were organised.  The first course, case studies in Thrombosis and Hemostasis, was given by Dr Devreese and Dr Schouwers from Ghent, Belgium.  They presented in total 8 different cases with interesting challenges for the laboratory.
Using an audiovisual response system, participants in this course were able to actively participate in the presentation. 

The second course was on the interpretation of external quality control results and troubleshooting based on these results, given by Dr. Meijer, the director of the ECAT Foundation.  

  

 

 

 

 

Course                                                                 Symposium

On Thursday afternoon November 11 and Friday November 12, the 7th ECAT symposium was held.  In total 190 participants took part in this symposium.  A variety of different topics were discussed, such as Fibrinolysis, Lupus Anticoagulant Testing, Von Willebrand Disease, Anticoagulation Testing, Case studies in Thrombosis and Bleeding Disorders, Factor VIII Inhibitor Testing, the use of biological variation in quality control, interpretation of quality control data and many others. 

A highlight of the meeting was the Haverkate Lecture, this time given by Professor James Westgard, entitled: “Quality Planning in the Hemostasis Laboratory”. This presentation describes a plan for analytical Quality Management that integrates many critical steps such as the definition of quality requirements, selection of measurement procedures to assure tracebility, validation of measurement procedures to assure performance, design of statistical QC procedures to verify the attainment of the intended quality of test results and development of an Analytical QC Plan on the basis of a risk analysis of the laboratory testing process.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Haverkate and Dr. Westgard                                  Exhibition area