Do you do your INR tests at home?

This special report is from Suzie Hutchinson, Chief Executive of Little Hearts Matter. It's all about warfarin, INR testing and helping to make your life easier. Don't know much about warfarin and INR? Get educated...

Hello Zippers. Yesterday I attended a reception in the House of Commons hosted by a group of charities called the Anticoagulation Self-Monitoring Alliance, or ACSMA for short. (Not to be confused with the American Canine Sport Medicine Association, which totally exists.)

Anyway, at the reception they had speeches and presentations, and the overall aim was to raise a greater awareness of the need for home monitoring of INR when a child or adult is on warfarin.

And where better to raise awareness?
At the moment, there are 1.2m people taking Warfarin in the UK but only 2% of them have access to home monitoring. I'm sure that your speedy maths has worked out that means that only about 24,000 out of those 1.2m can do their tests at home, which means that all of the rest (about 1,176,000) have to go to the either hospital or their GP every time they need a blood test. Most of them have to have a full blood test because a finger prick test is not available.

I know what you're thinking. That sounds like a real pain in the neck for the people that have to go to the doctor or hospital. Especially when they could take a teeny bit of blood from a finger prick and put it in a handheld machine at home. It also sounds pretty expensive, taking up doctors time with something that you could do yourself. Well, the NHS were worried about this, so they did a big study, and worked out that even if only 25% of people had access to home testing it would save the NHS £62 million a year.

The home machines to test your blood levels, called CoaguChek, fit in the palm of your hand.
Luckily, this makes so much sense that even David Cameron agrees, in 2011 he said…

“There’s a finger-prick blood test that allows patients on anticoagulation therapy to self monitor their blood clotting time. It’s effective, convenient and, in the end, cheaper for the NHS”

- The Prime Minister telling it like it is.

"I'm annoyed about this and want to do something to help! Right now!" I hear you say. Well, you're not alone, most of our young members are on anticoagulation therapy for life, so this is a big issue for Little Hearts Matter members. Here's what you can do:

1. Visit the ACSMA website and find the page for their campaign. (Or just click here if you're lazy.)
2. Add your name and details (they won't spam you, they're cool.)
3. Give yourself a massive pat on the back for helping to increase the chances of home-monitoring for everyone on warfarin.
4. Ice cream.
5. Get all of your friends to do the same if you're feeling particularly heroic.

We know that lots of young people don't really understand anticoagulation and warfarin as much as they'd like to, but they think that they should know so they are a bit embarrassed to ask. That's cool, Little Hearts Matter have developed a new information booklet that explains everything that you need to know about anticoagulation. We are very grateful to Roche, who make the INR machines, because they have offered to pay for the books publication. Hopefully it will be available for everyone soon, and we'll post a link to zipzipper as soon as it's ready!