Clinical Utility of D-Dimer for Rule-Out or Rule-In of Venous Thromboembolism in Syncope

Fig. 1 Diagnostic performance of D-dimer using two different assays in patients presenting with syncope. A Left: Receiver-operating characteristic curves quantifying the diagnostic performance of Innovance® D-dimer (blue) and hs-Loci-Innovance® D-dimer (red) for the diagnosis of venous thromboembolism (VTE). Right: Clinical application of D-dimer using the 2-level Wells-score with age-adjusted(1) or fixed cutoffs versus the YEARS-algorithm with probability-adjusted cut offs(2). B Left: Specificity for different cufoffs of Innovance® D-dimer (blue) and hs-Loci-Innovance® D-dimer (red) for the diagnosis of venous thromboembolism (VTE). Right: Percentage of patients ruled-in and correctly identified VTE patients for different cutoffs of Innovance® D-dimer (blue) and hs-Loci-Innovance® D-dimer (red). (1)In patients 50 years or younger, D-dimer concentration < 0.5 mg/l was considered negative. For patients older than 50 years, we used the formula: age in years divided by 100. (2)YEARS-algorithm: assessment of only three items from the Wells-score (clinical signs of deep vein thrombosis, hemoptysis, pulmonary embolism the most likely diagnosis) and using a D-dimer test threshold of 0.5 mg/l in presence, and 1.0 mg/l in absence of one of the YEARS-items [Image: see text]