Background: Direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) are commonly used oral anticoagulants for patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE). Sometimes these patients receive concomitant antiplatelet therapy, with limited data supporting the practice. This study investigated the effect of concomitant antiplatelet therapy (CAT) on clinical outcomes in VTE patients treated with anticoagulants.
Methods and results: The COMMAND VTE Registry-2 is a multicenter registry that enrolled 5,197 consecutive patients with acute symptomatic VTE across 31 centers in Japan between January 2015 and August 2020. After excluding 407 patients without oral anticoagulants, there were 4,790 VTE patients treated with oral anticoagulants. After propensity score matching, 676 patients (338 matched pairs in the CAT and anticoagulant only [AC] groups) were included for analysis. There were no significant differences between the CAT and AC groups in the cumulative 3-year incidence of recurrent VTE (4.9% vs. 7.3%, respectively; P=0.50), major bleeding (9.4% vs. 12.4%, respectively; P=0.36), or stroke (6.7% vs. 4.1%, respectively; P=0.24). However, the cumulative 3-year incidence of clinically relevant non-major bleeding (CRNMB) was significantly higher in the CAT group than in the AC group (17.7% vs. 10.0%; P=0.047).
Conclusions: In a large VTE registry in the DOAC era, concomitant antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapy, compared with anticoagulant alone, was not significantly associated with risks of recurrent VTE, major bleeding, or stroke, but did increase the risk of CRNMB.
Keywords: Anticoagulants; Antiplatelet therapy; Bleeding; Recurrence; Venous thromboembolism.