Patent ID: 7939288

Claim:
A method for determining whether a subject's bleeding disorder is based on a factor XIII and/or fibrinogen deficiency with a sample of blood or plasma of unknown factor XIII and fibrinogen levels from the subject, comprising: (a) providing at least two samples of blood or plasma, wherein at least one sample is from the subject; and (i) preparing a factor XIII inhibitor sample by adding factor XIII inhibitor to the sample from the subject and preparing a factor XIII inhibitor control sample by providing another sample from the subject without adding factor XIII inhibitor; and/or (ii) preparing a factor XIII sample by adding factor XIII to the sample from the subject and preparing a factor XIII control sample by providing another sample from the subject without adding factor XIII; and/or (iii) preparing a fibrinogen sample by adding fibrinogen activator to the sample from the subject and preparing a fibrinogen control sample by adding fibrinogen activator to control blood or plasma not from the subject; (b) performing thrombelastography (TEG) on all the samples to measure at least one TEG parameter in the samples, wherein the at least one TEG parameter is the same in all the samples; and (c) correlating the at least one TEG parameter in the samples to one another to determine whether the subject has a factor XIII and/or fibrinogen deficiency, wherein: (i) if there is no substantial difference between the values of the at least one TEG parameter in the factor XIII inhibitor sample and the factor XIII inhibitor control sample, the subject has a factor XIII deficiency; (ii) if there is a substantial difference between the values of the at least one TEG parameter in the factor XIII sample and the factor XIII control sample, the subject has a factor XIII deficiency; (iii) if there is a substantial difference between the values of the at least one TEG parameter in the fibrinogen sample and the fibrinogen control sample, the subject has a fibrinogen deficiency.