ACC: Guidelines For Managing Anticoagulant-Related Bleeding

The American College of Cardiology recently developed guidelines for the management of bleeding events among patients receiving anticoagulant therapy. Decision pathways were developed to provide physicians with “a clinically applicable, easily referenced, conceptual framework” for providing more patient-centered care among this population.

The pathways include:

• How to assess and define the severity of bleeding
• Strategies for initiating reversal agents to manage major bleeding
• When to restart anticoagulation therapy following a major bleed
• ​Impact of comorbidities and other drug therapies

“Decision Pathways are not intended to provide a single correct answer, but to encourage clinicians to ask certain questions and consider important factors as they come to their own decision on a treatment plan to be recommended and discussed with their patients,” the authors wrote.

—Melissa Weiss

Reference:

Tomaselli GF, Mahaffey KW, Cuker A, et al. 2017 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway on Management of Bleeding in Patients on Oral Anticoagulants [published December 1, 2017]. J Am Coll Cardiol. doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2017.09.1085.