Point of Care Testing in Coagulation:
The INR and Much More...
Speaker: Michael Laposata, M.D., Ph.D.

Objectives:  Upon completion of the seminar, participants will be able to:

  1. Learn the basic pathways of coagulation cascades and how anticoagulants affect them

  2. Understand the clinical basis of the need for point of care testing in coagulation

  3. Learn the different options for point of care coagulation testing and how institutional factors influence the decision to perform it

Dr. Michael Laposata is the Director of Clinical Laboratories and a physician in the Department of Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is a Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.  He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship and residency in Laboratory Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He took his first faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia in 1985, where he was an Assistant Professor and director of the hospital's coagulation laboratory. In 1989, he became Director of Clinical Laboratories at the Massachusetts General Hospital and was appointed to faculty in pathology at Harvard Medical School. His research program, with more than 130 peer reviewed publications, has focused on fatty acids and their metabolites. His research group is focused on the study of fatty acid ethyl esters, which are esterification products of fatty acid and ethanol, and on fatty acid alterations in cystic fibrosis.  Dr. Laposata's clinical expertise is in the field of blood coagulation, with a special expertise in the diagnosis of hypercoagulable states.

 

Dr. Laposata has implemented a system at MGH whereby the clinical laboratory data in coagulation and other areas of laboratory medicine are systematically interpreted with the generation of a patient specific narrative paragraph by a physician with expertise in the area.  This service is essentially identical to the service provided by physicians in radiology and anatomic pathology, except that it involves clinical laboratory test results. In 2005, Dr. Laposata was recognized by the Institute of Quality in Laboratory Medicine of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for this innovation. 

 

Dr. Laposata is the recipient of 14 major teaching prizes at Harvard, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. His recognitions include the 1989 Lindback award, a teaching prize with competition across the entire University of Pennsylvania system; the 1998 A. Clifford Barger mentorship award from Harvard Medical School; election to the Harvard Academy of Scholars in 2002, and the highest award - by vote of the graduating class - for teaching in years 1 and 2 at Harvard Medical School in 1999, 2000, and 2005.