Antithrombotic Drugs in Cirrhosis

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.