Dr. Pendleton notes that in subgroup analyses, the slight benefits of the new drugs have come in patients with poor warfarin control, so if patients with good warfarin control are switched, outcomes could generally be expected not to be better, and could be worse.
“It won’t cause me to take people who I have prescribed Pradaxa and switch them back to warfarin,” he says, “but part of that is [that] here, in our healthcare system, we’re pretty cautious in who gets put on one of the new agents. And so those that do are patients who are most like those in the clinical trial.”
Tom Collins is a freelance writer in Florida.