Real-life Use of Anticoagulants in Venous Thromboembolism With a Focus on Patients With Exclusion Criteria for Direct Oral Anticoagulants

We assessed the real-life use of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) in patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE) and exclusion criteria for randomized trials. From 2013 to 2016, 3,578 of 18,853 patients (19%) had exclusion criteria. Irrespective of which anticoagulant was chosen, they had more VTE recurrences (hazard ratio (HR): 3.10; 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.47\u20133.88), major bleeds (HR: 4.10; 95% CI: 3.38\u20134.96), and deaths (HR: 9.47; 95% CI: 8.46\u201310.6) than those without exclusion criteria. During initial therapy, no patient with exclusion criteria on DOACs (n = 115) recurred, but those on rivaroxaban bled less often (adjusted HR: 0.18; 95% CI: 0.04\u20130.79) than those on unfractionated heparin (n = 224) and similar to those (n = 3,172) on low-molecular-weight (LMWH) heparin. For long-term therapy, patients on rivaroxaban (n = 151) had nonsignificantly fewer VTE recurrences (adjusted HR: 0.74; 95% CI: 0.08\u20131.32) and major bleeds (adjusted HR: 0.41; 95% CI: 0.15\u20131.15) than those on LMWH (n = 2,071). The efficacy and safety of DOACs were similar to standard therapy