Coagulation Tests’ Normal Values in a Cameroonian Adult Population

Coagulation tests are routine analyses most prescribed in routine medical practices. Africans tend to use the thresholds of other races since they don’t have their own normal values. This was a prospective descriptive study carried out at the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital to determine normal values for coagulation’s tests. We included 160 venous samples from healthy blood donors, aged 18 to 56 years. Standard techniques were used for the measurement of prothrombin time, activated partial thromboplastin time and fibrinogen levels in all samples. The median prothrombin time was 13.01 s (10.2.-15.2) with a significant difference between males (PT=13,2s(11,1-15,5)) and females (PT=13,0s(10,1-15,2)), p=0,02 but not significant between the age groups (p=0,31).The median of APTT and fibrinogen were 32.4 s(22.2.-40.5), 2.8 g/L (1.5-4.2) and not significant between sex and age groups, p=0,34 and 0,14 respectively. Although the sample size does not allow for generalized conclusions, nevertheless, these findings provide indications to normal ranges for these coagulation tests among healthy adult Cameroonians. Furthermore, it may be relevant to consider the gender when interpreting coagulation tests in Cameroonian settings.