Chronic oral anticoagulant therapy for extrahepatic visceral thrombosis is safe

Abstract

Background: Patients with hypercoagulability may thrombose visceral veins with resultant portal hypertension, esophagogastric varices, and hemorrhage. The role of chronic oral anticoagulant therapy in such patients is unclear. On the one hand, such patients are prone to significant hemorrhage and thus anticoagulant therapy may seem contraindicated. On the other hand, because the causal pathophysiology is typically hypercoagulability, it would seem rational to treat these patients with chronic anticoagulant therapy in order to both prevent other visceral and systemic thromboses and perhaps, over time, reduce the degree of portal hypertension. Experience and poor prognosis associated with the more common portal hypertension due to hepatic cirrhosis may bias judgment.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the course of chronic oral anticoagulant therapy regarding both the safety and effectiveness using our long-term follow-up of a cohort of seven patients with visceral thrombosis resulting in extrahepatic non-cirrhotic portal hypertension.

Results: Seven consecutive patients encountered over the past 19 years were observed for 78 patient-years, the first 14 patient-years prior to anticoagulant therapy and the latter 64 patient-years on oral anticoagulant therapy. No patients rethrombosed either visceral or systemic vessels while on oral anticoagulant therapy. There were no fatal or serious hemorrhagic events on oral anticoagulant therapy; in fact, upper gastrointestinal bleeding decreased from 1.2 to 0.2 bleeds/year. The endoscopic grade of esophageal varices decreased in four of five patients who underwent serial endoscopy, and platelet counts increased in all seven patients.

Conclusions: Chronic oral anticoagulant therapy is safe and not associated with an increase in upper gastrointestinal bleeding in such patients. Additionally, and by inference, perhaps in conjunction with the natural history of portal hypertension, such therapy is possibly effective in reducing portal hypertension in patients with hypercoagulability-induced extrahepatic portal hypertension.