Direct oral anticoagulants targeting specific coagulation factors have been introduced as alternatives to conventional anticoagulants for both prophylactic and therapeutic indications. They have succeeded in overcoming the limitations of vitamin K antagonists. Although the favourable efficacy and side-effect profiles compared to vitamin K antagonists is proven, there is significant concern abou...

Anticoagulants are frequently used medications in diverse cardiovascular diseases. Their uses highly increase the risk of bleeding from upper and lower gastrointestinal sources, whether there is a classic vitamin K antagonist or a novel oral anticoagulant. Their interruption can promote procoagulation status with different thromboembolic accidents. Discontinuation of oral anticoagulants before ...

Prophylaxis against venous thromboembolism (VTE) is considered standard of care. Appropriate chemoprophylaxis for VTE has been mandated by the United States government agencies and consumer groups. However, controversies exist regarding the most clinically relevant and safe chemoprophylaxis protocols in patients undergoing joint replacement surgery. Thus, this paper reviews the clinical efficac...

Historically, most patients who required parenteral anticoagulation received heparin, whereas those patients requiring oral anticoagulation received warfarin. Due to the narrow therapeutic index and need for frequent laboratory monitoring associated with warfarin, there has been a desire to develop newer, more effective anticoagulants. Consequently, in recent years many novel anticoagulants hav...

Diagnosis of antiphospholipid antibody syndrome includes laboratory testing for lupus anticoagulants (LAs). Guidelines for testing have been published, but approaches vary, often incorporating multiple tests. We evaluated the performance of the activated partial thromboplastin time using 2 reagents, a dilute Russell viper venom time, and a hexagonal phospholipid assay for detecting LAs in 105 a...

Reply Dear Sir: We thank Doctors Eriksson, Friedman, Cushner, and Lassen for their letter regarding our recently published manuscript: Potent anticoagulants are associated with a higher all-cause mortality rate after hip and knee arthroplasty [15]. They have challenged the evidence presented in our paper which suggests that potent anticoagulants are associated with higher mortality than multimo...