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Warfarin

Starting treatment
Indications
Dosing and monitoring
Complications
Follow-up
Dosing and monitoring

In patients with venous thromboembolism, give LMWH or heparin while awaiting satisfactory oral anticoagulation. a  

Why?

  • It reduces symptomatic deep vein thrombosis recurrence without clearly increasing the risk of major bleeding a

Adding heparin to warfarin reduces symptomatic recurrence of deep vein thrombosis

Patient Treatment Comparison Outcome CER RRR
(95% CI)		 NNT
(95% CI)
proximal DVT a heparin and warfarin warfarin symptomatic recurrence of DVT
at 6 months 		32% 200%
(3% to 780%) 		8
(4 to 71)
 

Expiry date: May 2003
Levels of Evidence used in grading these guides

With thanks to Drs. David Keeling, John Reynolds, David Sackett, Sharon Straus and Alan Townsend 
 for use of their anticoagulation guide on which this one is based.

Author   CM   Ball
Reviewer   A   Gallus
CAT Writer   CM   Ball