Background Careful assessment of bleeding history is the first step in the evaluation of patients with mild/moderate bleeding disorders, and the use of a bleeding assessment tool (BAT) is strongly encouraged. Although a few studies have assessed the utility of the ISTH‐BAT in patients with inherited platelet function disorders (IPFD) none of them was sufficiently large to draw conclusions and/or included appropriate control groups. Objectives The aim of the present study was to test the utility of the ISTH‐BAT in a large cohort of patients with a well‐defined diagnosis of inherited platelets disorder in comparison with two parallel cohorts, one of patients with type‐1 von Willebrand disease (VWD‐1) and one of healthy controls (HC). Patients/Methods We enrolled 1098 subjects, 482 of whom had inherited platelet disorders (196 IPFD and 286 inherited platelet number disorders [IT]) from 17 countries. Results IPFD patients had significantly higher bleeding score (BS; median 9) than VWD‐1 patients (median 5), a higher number of hemorrhagic symptoms (4 versus 3), and higher percentage of patients with clinically relevant symptoms (score > 2). The ISTH‐BAT showed excellent discrimination power between IPFD and HC (0.9 < area under the curve [AUC] < 1), moderate (0.7 < AUC < 0.9) between IPFD and VWD‐1 and between IPFD and inherited thrombocytopenia (IT), while it was inaccurate (AUC ≤ 0.7) in discriminating IT from HC. Conclusions The ISTH‐BAT allows to efficiently discriminate IPFD from HC, while it has lower accuracy in distinguishing IPFD from VWD‐1. Therefore, the ISTH‐BAT appears useful for identifying subjects requiring laboratory evaluation for a suspected IPFD once VWD is preliminarily excluded.

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Our results hint VASP-phosphorylation assay as a relevant method for guiding and tailoring DAPT.

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We report the first case of acute meningitis caused by a rare, atypical pathogen. An 11-month-old infant was admitted to hospital with clinical symptoms typical of acute meningitis. Cerebrospinal fluid analysis revealed an elevated neutrophil cell count and high proteins. Microbiological examination of the fluid confirmed an atypical cause of meningitis--Staphylococcus intermedius. Antibiotic therapy with cefotaxime was successful and the child made a full recovery.