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Dabigatran versus warfarin in patients with mechanical heart valves: comment.
J Thromb Haemost. 2013 Dec 23;
Authors: Christensen TD, Larsen TB
Abstract
It is with great interest we have read the paper by Eikelboom et al. recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine [1]. In this study, dabigatran was compared to warfarin in mechanical heart valve patients. Dabigatran was found to be inferior to warfarin, both in terms of major bleeding and thromboembolic events. We would like to focus on the management in the warfarin group, which we think could have been even further optimized. Firstly, only 30% had aspirin prescribed. It is has been shown that this group of patients benefit from having aspirin in addition to their warfarin treatment, since it reduces the risk of systemic embolism or death [2]. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
PMID: 24373331 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]