Cardiology: Canadian Study Shows That Combo Of Xarelto With Aspirin More Effective To Treat Patients With Cardiovascular Or Peripheral Arterial Disease
Source: Cardiology May 28, 2020 4 years, 5 months, 3 weeks, 5 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes ago
Cardiology: According to a new medical research by cardiologists from the University of Alberta and Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute, it was found that pairing a blood-thinning drug with aspirin daily for patients who have an angioplasty with a stent can contribute to better health outcomes, including lower risk of death, than just alone.
The research study led by Dr Kevin Bainey, a University of Alberta interventional cardiologist and Associate Professor, builds on the COMPASS study that followed 27,400 people from around the world with stable coronary or peripheral artery disease.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01776424
The new study shows that the combination of a small dose of the blood-thinning drug rivaroxaban (Xarelto) twice daily plus 100 mg of aspirin once daily was significantly better than only one or the other in preventing heart attacks, strokes and death.
Dr Bainey told Thailand Medical News, "There are a lot of patients with stable coronary disease who have stents in their heart arteries. Most commonly, the only blood thinner they are taking is aspirin. We however wanted to know whether those patients would benefit in the same way from the COMPASS dual-pathway approach.”
Dr Bainey and researchers from around the world focused on a subgroup of nearly 10,000 COMPASS participants who had previously had an angioplasty with a stent inserted in blood vessels in the heart, and found that the treatment did lead to better health outcomes in that group, reducing heart attacks, strokes and deaths.
Interestingly, the study also showed that the time between a patient's prior coronary intervention and starting dual pathway treatment made no difference in improving the health outcomes for these patients.
He emphasized, "It does not matter if a patient had a stent a year ago or 10 years ago; with this dual pathway strategy you still see an improvement in outcomes and, most importantly, an improvement in survival."
This new dual-pathway treatment protocol has been approved by Health Canada for use in patients with chronic coronary or peripheral disease. Thanks in part to COMPASS trials.
Dr Bainey is hoping his research will encourage more cardiologists and physicians to prescribe it to patients with or without a prior stent.
He said, "As an interventional cardiologist, I put a lot of stents in people, and the question in my mind is always, 'Can we improve upon their outcomes and reduce their residual risk? We're always trying to find ways to optimize their therapy. So when you have a drug that has been shown to improve a patient's survival, you really hope that it takes off as standard of care."
The research findings were published in the medical journal Circulation.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.119.04459
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Also refer to earlier studies from the ongoing COMPASS Trial.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1709118
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