PLoS ONE (Jan 2015)

Long-Term Anticoagulant Therapy of Patients with Venous Thromboembolism. What Are the Practices?

  • Isabelle Mahé,
  • Raluca Sterpu,
  • Laurent Bertoletti,
  • Luciano López-Jiménez,
  • Meritxell Mellado Joan,
  • Javier Trujillo-Santos,
  • Aitor Ballaz,
  • Luis Manuel Hernández Blasco,
  • Pablo Javier Marchena,
  • Manuel Monreal,
  • RIETE Investigators

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0128741
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 6
p. e0128741

Abstract

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Current guidelines of antithrombotic therapy suggest early initiation of vitamin K antagonists (VKA) in non-cancer patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE), and long-term therapy with low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH) for those with cancer. We used data from RIETE (international registry of patients with VTE) to report the use of long-term anticoagulant therapy over time and to identify predictors of anticoagulant choice (regarding international guidelines) in patients with- and without cancer. Among 35,280 patients without cancer, 82% received long-term VKA (but 17% started after the first week). Among 4,378 patients with cancer, 66% received long term LMWH as monotherapy. In patients without cancer, recent bleeding (odds ratio [OR] 2.70, 95% CI 2.26-3.23), age >70 years (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.06-1.24), immobility (OR 2.06, 95% CI 1.93-2.19), renal insufficiency (OR 2.42, 95% CI 2.15-2.71) and anemia (OR 1.75, 95% CI 1.65-1.87) predicted poor adherence to guidelines. In those with cancer, anemia (OR 1.83, 95% CI 1.64-2.06), immobility (OR 1.51, 95% CI 1.30-1.76) and metastases (OR 3.22, 95% CI 2.87-3.61) predicted long-term LMWH therapy. In conclusion, we report practices of VTE therapy in real life and found that a significant proportion of patients did not receive the recommended treatment. The perceived increased risk for bleeding has an impact on anticoagulant treatment decision.