[Evaluation of continuous education in transfusion for professionals in hospitals and clinics]. / Evaluation d'un enseignement en transfusion sanguine proposé aux professionnels des établissements de santé.

Professional health workers need continuous update of knowledge in blood transfusion practice. To fulfill this expectation, the "Etablissement français du sang (E.F.S) Auvergne-Loire", in cooperation with the Department of Regional Affairs in Health Services in the Auvergne region, has set up a proximity-based and a dedicated continuous education course, for more than three years. The content of this update course was based upon regulatory recommendations. The course is one day long; an evaluation of the course by the teachers as well as an evaluation of the teachers' level after the course is carried out. Each course attendant is given a CD-ROM which comprises all of the presentations of the day, along with relevant law texts. We now report on our experience in teaching 127 individual professionals in eight sessions: 95% gave full appreciation. This experience reached - up to now - 53% of the public and private hospitals with transfusion services in the Auvergne region and the Loire district and 90% of structures having remote blood banks. This experience can easily be extended to other regional E.F.S. settings.

[Evaluation of Owren's thrombotest in the monitoring of treatment with antivitamin K]. / Evaluation du thrombotest d'Owren dans la surveillance des traitements par antivitamine K.

The need to standardize the monitoring of oral anticoagulant treatments has led some countries to adopt, generally, Owren's Thrombotest. Apart from needing only one reagent and being perfectly adapted to this type of monitoring, the thrombotest has the advantage of being able to be used on capillary blood and venous blood and of not being influenced by the storage of the blood samples. Its disadvantages are that it is slow to perform, difficult to automate and that it has a therapeutic range which is narrow and close to the limits of precision of the technique. The results of the Thrombotest correlate well with those of the Quick test, the activated cephalin time and the X level measured by the amidolytic technique. Until the chromogenic assays are developed, the Owren's Thrombotest provides a better homogeneity and standardization of the results coming from different laboratories.