We know that in patients who miss doses, they're at increased risk for developing blood clotting complications. Medication adherence is a critical issue when it comes to anticoagulation or blood thinning. Medication Adherence and Anticoagulation Therapy We don't use those as routinely for stroke prevention and atrial fibrillation, for patients who are at home with mechanical heart valves, and for patients with blood clots who have transitioned from the hospital to home. There are some blood thinners that are given by injection in special circumstances. So we take into account patient preference and what we think will do the best job. We may opt for a once daily medication to make things a little bit easier, but there also reasons to pick twice daily. Now some of them are taken once daily, some are taken twice daily, and that's something we have to consider when we think of adherence to the medication regimen in our patients. For patients with blood clots in the veins, such as deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism, we'll use either warfarin or one of these newer agents.īlood thinners like warfarin and these newer agents, which include dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban, are all taken by mouth. For patients who have mechanical heart valves or who have valvular disease and are at risk for stroke due to atrial fibrillation, we'll tend to use warfarin more frequently. For things like stroke prevention and atrial fibrillation, we consider both warfarin along with these newer anticoagulants. The way that we choose patients for these anticoagulants is to consider what the condition is that the patient has. For decades we were really limited to warfarin or coumadin, but there have been studies on non-warfarin type anticoagulants that have shown them to be very effective and very safe and those have arrived on the market. Over the last five years, we've actually had an explosion in the number of anticoagulant options. We're actually in a very special time in medicine. There are a number of anticoagulants that are used. And then we use them to treat patients who've experienced blood clots in either the veins or the arteries. We also use them to treat patients who have mechanical heart valves.
Most commonly, we use blood thinners or anticoagulants to treat atrial fibrillation, which is an irregular heart rhythm. Anticoagulants or blood thinners are used to treat patients with a number of cardiovascular diseases.
0 kommentar(er)
