A new study published in the American Journal of surgery assessed the impact of pre-injury anticoagulant use on the outcomes of isolated blunt abdominal solid organ injury (SOI) patients who underwent nonoperative management (NOM).

The present study included trauma patients above 18 years of age. Overall, 2,709 patients were stratified into two groups – patients on anticoagulant therapy (AC group) and those who did not take anticoagulants (no-AC group), before their injury.

The findings showed that compared to the No-AC group, the AC group had higher rates of NOM failure, cardiac arrest, acute kidney injury (AKI), myocardial infarction (MI), as well as mortality. In addition, the latter group had longer hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stays.

Therefore, it was concluded that among nonoperatively managed blunt abdominal SOI patients, pre-injury use of anticoagulants leads to poorer. Thus, caution is warranted and detailed history-taking must be practiced while managing such patients with abdominal SOI.

Source: American Journal of Surgery. 2022 Jun 25; S0002-9610(22)00439-1. doi: 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2022.06.019.