Direct Oral Anticoagulants Versus Warfarin in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation and Valve Replacement or Repair

Abstract

Background We sought to examine outcomes of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) versus warfarin in atrial fibrillation with valve repair/replacement. Methods and Results Two atrial fibrillation cohorts from Medicare were identified from 2015 to 2019. They comprised patients who underwent surgical or transcatheter mitral valve repair (MV repair cohort) and surgical aortic or mitral bioprosthetic or transcatheter aortic valve replacement (bioprosthetic cohort). Each cohort was divided into warfarin and DOACs (apixaban, rivaroxaban, and dabigatran) groups. Study outcomes included mortality, stroke, and major bleeding. Inverse probability weighting was used for adjustment between the 2 groups in each cohort. The MV repair cohort included 1178 patients. After a median of 468 days, DOACs were associated with lower risk of mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.67 [95% CI, 0.55–0.82], P<0.001), ischemic stroke (HR, 0.72 [95% CI, 0.52–1.00], P=0.05) and bleeding (HR, 0.79 [95% CI, 0.63–0.99], P=0.04) compared with warfarin. The bioprosthetic cohort included 8089 patients. After a median follow‐up of 413 days, DOACs were associated with similar risk of mortality (adjusted HR, 0.93 [95% CI, 0.86–1.01], P=0.08), higher risk of ischemic stroke (adjusted HR, 1.27 [95% CI, 1.13–1.43], P<0.001), and lower risk of bleeding (adjusted HR, 0.86 [95% CI, 0.80–0.93], P<0.001) compared with warfarin. Conclusions In patients with atrial fibrillation, DOACs are associated with similar mortality, lower bleeding, but higher stroke with bioprosthetic valve replacement and lower risk of all 3 outcomes with MV repair compared with warfarin.

Keywords

• apixaban
• atrial fibrillation
• brain ischemia
• dabigatran
• mitral valve
• rivaroxaban