Five-minute preparation of platelet-poor plasma for routine coagulation testing.

Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute guidelines require that routine coagulation tests are performed with platelet-poor plasma (< 10,000 platelets/microL) and prepared from whole citrated blood centrifuged at low speed for 10-30 minutes. To compare results obtained from plasma centrifuged for 5 minutes at 3000 g or for 10 minutes at 2000 g, 46 blood samples from normal healthy adults were assayed for prothrombin time, international normalized ratio and activated partial thromboplastin time. No significant differences were found in test results and it was concluded that 5 minutes centrifugation at 3000 g is a reliable and useful option to reduce the turnaround time for these tests.