[What's new on antithrombotics?]

Management of venous thromboembolism disease could be improved by new drugs with lower risk of bleeding and without the need of regular monitoring of anticoagulant effect. In this way, idraparinux, anti-Xa inhibitor, has been compared to conventional therapy (coumarins) for the treatment of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Is it worth to treat patients more than six months? This has been evaluated in an interesting study. Prophylaxis after hip replacement surgery is indicated to reduce the risk of venous thromboembolism, new drugs are under investigation. Dabigatran etexilate, a direct thrombin inhibitor, has been shown as effective as enoxaparin in reducing the risk of venous thromboembolism after total hip replacement surgery. In 2007, new european guidelines for non-STsegment elevation acute coronary syndromes have been published. Two new antithrombotic drugs, bivalirudin and fondaparinux, are now part of the different possible choices according to specific considerations. New factor Xa and factor IIa inhibitors are under investigation and are compared to heparin in PCI for NSTE-ACS. Fondaparinux and more recently otamixaban have given interesting results. These new recommendations have not yet taken into account new data published in 2007. What will be the positioning of prasugrel, a new thienopyridine, after the results of theTRITON trial? In patients with SCA treated by PCI, prasugrel reduced the ischemic events, while increasing major bleedings. In 2007, numerous publications and meta-analyses on drug-eluting stents (DES) have been published and tempered the fear about a possible increase in mortality with the use of DES.