Antithrombotic Drugs in Cirrhosis

Abstract

In patients with liver cirrhosis treated for portal vein thrombosis, there was no increase in the risk of bleeding, but there was a decrease in the incidence of liver decompensation and an increase in the survival of treated patients when compared to the untreated ones(1). Current guidelines(2) do not provide specific recommendations for the prophylaxis or treatment of thromboembolic diseases in patients with liver cirrhosis(3). In order to determine the influence of anti-thrombotic treatment on the prognosis of liver cirrhosis, 85 patients with liver cirrhosis were followed clinically, by laboratory and ultrasound parameters, for 6 months. Microsoft Excel and IBM SPSS Statistics 20 were used to analyse the data of patients, divided into two groups according to the presence or absence of anti-thrombotic treatment initiated for cardiovascular pathology. The obtained results showed that the mortality rate between the two groups was similar: 11.54% untreated, 12.12% treated, the decompensation rate of untreated patients was higher than that of the treated ones (36.54% vs. 24.24%) with antithrombotic drugs and that no patient among those treated with antithrombotic drugs showed upper digestive haemorrhage (p =0.038). The conclusions drawn from this study were that patients with liver cirrhosis in antithrombotic treatment have a better prognosis than untreated ones, in the absence of major bleeding complications, but for a change in guidelines and current practice, studies are needed on a larger number of patients in order to validate these observations.