A computerized regulation of dosage in oral anticoagulant therapy

The results of a cooperative study on the quality of treatment of patients with prosthetic heart valves (PHV) on long-term oral anticoagulants (OA) are reported. The study was carried out on 695 patients bearing PHV (with an overall 8,340 checks carried out in 1988) through a computer-assisted system for monitoring the laboratory and treatment follow-up. The specifications of the software are described in detail in the text. The mean INR slightly differed in the two participating centers (Rome and Parma) (3.25 vs 3.19) as did the weekly mean dosage (18.2 vs 20.7 mg) of oral anticoagulant, which was always Acenocoumarol. More than 70% of the checks were within the range in both centers as evaluated by a check randomly chosen once a month for each single patient. Considering the whole bunch of data, about 80% of the patients had greater than 50% of their checks within the therapeutic range and more than 30% had greater than 75% of the checks within the range. This study demonstrates that the availability of a computerized program for monitoring oral anticoagulant therapy allows to perform multicenter studies and to obtain data which can improve the quality of treatment of patients on OA.