Jeffry:

My experience has been that the vendors have done a good job of selling physicians on the notion that only the ELISA methods provide reliable D-Dimer results. The literature speaks otherwise. In clinical comparisons, kinetic agglutination methods--several of which are automated and provide rapid turnaround time--perform just as well. There is a bias, among clinicians, toward ELISA methods, and I think it is due to the fact that the first D-Dimer methods used ELISA technology, so most of the literature refers to that method.

There are fairly rapid ELISA methods for D-Dimer available, including the Mini-VIDAS.

But automated rate agglutination methods have proven just as good. We did an in-house comparison, and even though the Mini-VIDAS ELISA method and the (formerly Bio-Merieux; now Trinity Biotech) rate agglutination method gave equivalent results, the clinicians still wanted to use the ELISA.

Best regards,

Roger

Roger L. Bertholf, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Pathology

Director of Clinical Chemistry, Toxicology,

and Point of Care Testing

University of Florida Health Science Center/Jacksonville

Dear Colleagues,

It's said that Only D-Dimer quantitative assays can be used to exclude DVT and PE. Even though ELISA-based tests are sensitive, they are time consuming and require specialized equipment and training. We are now looking for some commercial rapid quantitative D-Dimer tests. Could anyone recommend some to me?

Thanks,

Jeffrey Xie Ph.D

Scientist

PLA center for Laboratory Medicine,

Fuzhou General Hospital