Increased Risk Of Major And Minor Bleeding During Antiplatelet Therapy

Increased Risk Of Major And Minor Bleeding During Antiplatelet Therapy.
Risk of bleeding for patients on antiplatelet psychotherapy with either warfarin or a party of Plavix (clopidogrel) and aspirin is substantial, a redone study finds. Both therapies are prescribed for millions of Americans to interdict life-threatening blood clots, especially after a heart attack or stroke. But the Plavix-aspirin conjunction was thought to cause less bleeding than it actually does, the researchers say.

And "As with all drugs, these drugs come with risks; the most importance is bleeding," said lead author Dr Nadine Shehab, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the endanger of bleeding from warfarin is well-known, the risks associated with dual remedy were not well understood. "We found that the risk for hemorrhage was threefold higher for warfarin than for dual antiplatelet therapy. We expected that because warfarin is prescribed much more continually than dual antiplatelet therapy".

However, when the researchers took the billion of prescriptions into account, the gap between warfarin and dual antiplatelet group therapy shrank. "And this was worrisome". For both regimens, the number of hospital admissions because of bleeding was similar. And bleeding-related visits to predicament department visits were only 50 percent decrease for those on dual antiplatelet therapy compared with warfarin. "This isn't as big a difference as we had thought".

For the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Shehab's yoke used national databases to pigeon-hole emergency department visits for bleeding caused by either dual antiplatelet therapy or warfarin between 2006 and 2008. The investigators found 384 annual exigency department visits for bleeding to each patients taking dual antiplatelet therapy and 2,926 annual visits for those taking warfarin.