Objective To investigate the effect of remote ischemic conditioning (RIC) on blood coagulation
function in patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH).
Methods A total of 24 consecutive aSAH patients in Neurosurgery ICU of Xuanwu Hospital from
November 2017 to May 2018 were enrolled in this study. All patients were given RIC intervention,
with 5 times RIC for each patient within 7 days. The blood coagulation function of each patient was
tested before and after each RIC intervention, including prothrombin activity (PTA), prothrombin
time (PT), activated partial prothrombin time (APTT), international normalized ratio (INR),
fibrinogen (Fib), D-dimer and thromboelastogram (TEG, including R, K, Angle, MA, EPL, LY30, A,
CI, G, A30 and etc.). Meanwhile, vascular ultrasound was used to detect deep vein thrombosis (DVT)
before and after each RIC intervention.
Results (1) There were no significant change in APTT and D-dimer before and after the
intervention, PTA decreased (t =3.171, P =0.004) and PT (t =-2.581, P =0.017), INR (t =-3.309,
P =0.003) and Fib (t =-2.304, P =0.031) increased slightly after intervention, while all the average levels were still in normal reference ranges. (2) Of all TEG paramaters, only MA increased slightly
after intervention (t =-2.173, P =0.040), but still in normal reference range, the other including R, K,
Angle, EPL, LY30, A, CI, G, A30 had no significant difference before and after the intervention. (3)
DVT was not detected in all patients after the RIC intervention.
Conclusions RIC has no obvious effect on coagulation function in aSAH patients, and RIC doesn’t
lead to DVT. The results preliminary demonstrated that aSAH patients treated with RIC have good
safety.
