Clinching the diagnosis: assessment of hemostatic function.

The key to an adequate assessment of the hemostatic status of an individual patient is a full and adequate medical history and proper physical examination, and no set of screening tests can replace this. The vast majority of patients thus assessed will require no tests and the coagulation laboratory staff can concentrate on the full assessment of the small number of patients who will be identified as being at risk. The assessment of disturbances of hemostasis is a logical, and basically quite simple, sequence of tests.