Continuous Warfarin Safe During Angiography

MONDAY, Aug. 25 (HealthDay News) -- Uninterrupted warfarin therapy does not increase the risk of excessive bleeding or site complications during coronary angiography and may be reasonable in clinical practice, according to a report in the August issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.

Antti-Pekka Annala, M.D., of Satakunta Central Hospital in Pori, Finland, and colleagues retrospectively compared safety and efficacy of uninterrupted warfarin therapy during coronary angiography to a policy of preprocedural warfarin pause.

Overall, 258 consecutive patients were age- and gender-matched to 258 controls. No significant difference in access site, bleeding complications or major adverse cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events between the warfarin group and controls was noted, the researchers report. In the preprocedural pause group, warfarin was interrupted in 31 percent and bridging therapy was used 30 percent. While international normalized ratio (INR) levels were greater in the uninterrupted warfarin group, access site complications were not increased compared to either of the preprocedural warfarin pause groups, the investigators found.

"Our results suggest that uninterrupted therapeutic warfarin treatment does not predispose a patient to excessive bleeding or access site complications during coronary angiography," the authors write. "The low incidence of clinical access site complications in our series supports the view that performing coronary angiography during uninterrupted therapeutic warfarin treatment is a reasonable option in clinical practice."

Abstract
Full Text (subscription or payment may be required)