Deans' stroke musings: Direct Oral Anticoagulants Versus Warfarin in the Treatment of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis (ACTION-CVT): A Multicenter International Study

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Friday, May 6, 2022

Direct Oral Anticoagulants Versus Warfarin in the Treatment of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis (ACTION-CVT): A Multicenter International Study

The safety profiles of both are not that reassuring, our stroke medical professionals should be able to do better. This tyranny of low expectations needs to stop. Accepting failure like this seems to be endemic to stroke; 'Hey, most persons survived, who gives a shit about their quality of life?'

Direct Oral Anticoagulants Versus Warfarin in the Treatment of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis (ACTION-CVT): A Multicenter International Study

Originally published10 Feb 2022https://doi.org/10.1161/STROKEAHA.121.037541Stroke. 2022;53:728–738

Abstract

Background:

A small randomized controlled trial suggested that dabigatran may be as effective as warfarin in the treatment of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT). We aimed to compare direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) to warfarin in a real-world CVT cohort.

Methods:

This multicenter international retrospective study (United States, Europe, New Zealand) included consecutive patients with CVT treated with oral anticoagulation from January 2015 to December 2020. We abstracted demographics and CVT risk factors, hypercoagulable labs, baseline imaging data, and clinical and radiological outcomes from medical records. We used adjusted inverse probability of treatment weighted Cox-regression models to compare recurrent cerebral or systemic venous thrombosis, death, and major hemorrhage in patients treated with warfarin versus DOACs. We performed adjusted inverse probability of treatment weighted logistic regression to compare recanalization rates on follow-up imaging across the 2 treatments groups.

Results:

Among 1025 CVT patients across 27 centers, 845 patients met our inclusion criteria. Mean age was 44.8 years, 64.7% were women; 33.0% received DOAC only, 51.8% received warfarin only, and 15.1% received both treatments at different times. During a median follow-up of 345 (interquartile range, 140–720) days, there were 5.68 recurrent venous thrombosis, 3.77 major hemorrhages, and 1.84 deaths per 100 patient-years. Among 525 patients who met recanalization analysis inclusion criteria, 36.6% had complete, 48.2% had partial, and 15.2% had no recanalization. When compared with warfarin, DOAC treatment was associated with similar risk of recurrent venous thrombosis (aHR, 0.94 [95% CI, 0.51–1.73]; P=0.84), death (aHR, 0.78 [95% CI, 0.22–2.76]; P=0.70), and rate of partial/complete recanalization (aOR, 0.92 [95% CI, 0.48–1.73]; P=0.79), but a lower risk of major hemorrhage (aHR, 0.35 [95% CI, 0.15–0.82]; P=0.02).

Conclusions:

In patients with CVT, treatment with DOACs was associated with similar clinical and radiographic outcomes and favorable safety profile when compared with warfarin treatment. Our findings need confirmation by large prospective or randomized studies.