Non-Vitamin K Antagonist Oral Anticoagulants in Pulmonary Embolism: An Overview of Systematic Reviews

Abstract

Background: Anticoagulation in patients with pulmonary embolism.

Objective: To identify how non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants are associated with multiple outcomes in patients with pulmonary embolism.

Methods: We performed a systematic search of systematic reviews via multiple electronic databases from inception to August 19th, 2019, without language restriction. Two authors independently extracted data and assessed the methodological quality of the included systematic reviews using the ROBIS tool.

Results: We found twelve systematic reviews. Eleven SRs collected their data from randomized clinical trials and one from observational studies. All the included studies were published between 2014 and 2019 in English. The methodological quality of the 12 systematic reviews was low to high. None of the systematic reviews, which are included in our overview of systematic reviews, has evaluated the overall quality of evidence outcome using the Grading of Recommendations Assessments, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.

Conclusion: This is the first effort to summarize evidence about non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants in an overview of systematic reviews focusing exclusively on patients with pulmonary embolism. The evidence suggests that the non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants seem to be more effective and safer than a dualdrug approach with LMWH- VKA.

Keywords: Pulmonary embolism; ROBIS tool; anticoagulants; dual-drug; non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants; systematic review.