Steve Styles

The Food and Drug Administration has approved ticagrelor (Brilinta/Brilique, AstraZeneca) for use with aspirin to cut the risk for a first myocardial infarction or stroke in high-risk patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) but no history of MI or stroke, AstraZeneca announced today. 

Patients falling under the new indication do not need to have diabetes, although THEMIS had entered patients with diabetes and CAD, the latter defined as a 50% or greater narrowing of a coronary artery or a history of coronary revascularization but without a history of MI or stroke. 

The trial showed a significant reduction in the rate of the primary efficacy end point (P = .04), a composite of cardiovascular death, MI, and stroke. But the risk of TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) bleeding classification major bleeding was more than doubled in the ticagrelor group (P < .001) and the risk for intracranial hemorrhage went up 71% (P = .005). Net clinical benefit didn't differ significantly between the groups in an exploratory analysis. 

The benefit of dual-antiplatelet therapy with ticagrelor for the primary efficacy end point was even more pronounced in a prespecified THEMIS subanalysis of more than 11,000 patients with a history of percutaneous coronary intervention. In this group, the risk for  intracerebral hemorrhage didn't differ significantly between the groups, and the net clinical benefit favored ticagrelor by a significant 15%. 

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved ticagrelor (Brilinta/Brilique, AstraZeneca) for use with aspirin to cut the risk for a first myocardial infarction or stroke in high-risk patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) but no history of MI or stroke, AstraZeneca announced today. 

Patients falling under the new indication do not need to have diabetes, although THEMIS had entered patients with diabetes and CAD, the latter defined as a 50% or greater narrowing of a coronary artery or a history of coronary revascularization but without a history of MI or stroke. 

The trial showed a significant reduction in the rate of the primary efficacy end point (P = .04), a composite of cardiovascular death, MI, and stroke. But the risk of TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) bleeding classification major bleeding was more than doubled in the ticagrelor group (P < .001) and the risk for intracranial hemorrhage went up 71% (P = .005). Net clinical benefit didn't differ significantly between the groups in an exploratory analysis. 

The benefit of dual-antiplatelet therapy with ticagrelor for the primary efficacy end point was even more pronounced in a prespecified THEMIS subanalysis of more than 11,000 patients with a history of percutaneous coronary intervention. In this group, the risk for  intracerebral hemorrhage didn't differ significantly between the groups, and the net clinical benefit favored ticagrelor by a significant 15%. 

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved ticagrelor (Brilinta/Brilique, AstraZeneca) for use with aspirin to cut the risk for a first myocardial infarction or stroke in high-risk patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) but no history of MI or stroke, AstraZeneca announced today. 

Patients falling under the new indication do not need to have diabetes, although THEMIS had entered patients with diabetes and CAD, the latter defined as a 50% or greater narrowing of a coronary artery or a history of coronary revascularization but without a history of MI or stroke. 

The trial showed a significant reduction in the rate of the primary efficacy end point (P = .04), a composite of cardiovascular death, MI, and stroke. But the risk of TIMI (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction) bleeding classification major bleeding was more than doubled in the ticagrelor group (P < .001) and the risk for intracranial hemorrhage went up 71% (P = .005). Net clinical benefit didn't differ significantly between the groups in an exploratory analysis. 

The benefit of dual-antiplatelet therapy with ticagrelor for the primary efficacy end point was even more pronounced in a prespecified THEMIS subanalysis of more than 11,000 patients with a history of percutaneous coronary intervention. In this group, the risk for  intracerebral hemorrhage didn't differ significantly between the groups, and the net clinical benefit favored ticagrelor by a significant 15%. 

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

Some patients aged 80 years or older can potentially cut back on their number of antihypertensive meds, under physician guidance, without an important loss of blood pressure (BP) control, researchers concluded based on their randomized multicenter trial.

Deprescription of one of at least two antihypertensive meds in such patients was found noninferior to usual care in keeping systolic BP below 150 mm Hg at 12 weeks, in the study that randomly assigned only patients who were considered appropriate for BP-med reduction by their primary care physicians.

Major trials that have shaped some contemporary hypertension guidelines, notably SPRINT, in general have not included such older patients with hypertension along with other chronic conditions, such as diabetes or a history of stroke. So “it’s difficult to know whether their data are relevant for frail, multimorbid patients. In fact, the guidelines say you should use some clinical judgment when applying the results of SPRINT to the kind of patients seen in clinical practice,” James P. Sheppard, PhD, of University of Oxford (England) said in an interview.

The current study, called Optimising Treatment for Mild Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly (OPTIMISE), entered “patients in whom the benefits of taking blood pressure-lowering treatments might start to be outweighed by the potential harms,” Dr. Sheppard said.

The trial is meant to provide something of an otherwise-scant evidence base for how to deprescribe antihypertensive medications, said Dr. Sheppard, who is lead author on the report published May 25 in JAMA.

Of the trial’s 282 patients randomly assigned to the drug-reduction group, 86.4% reached the primary endpoint goal of systolic BP less than 150 mm Hg, compared with 87.7% of the 287 patients on usual care, a difference which in adjusted analysis met the predetermined standard for noninferiority.

The intervention group reduced its number of antihypertensive agents by a mean of 0.6 per patient, which the authors described as “a modest reduction.” However, they noted, drugs that were taken away could be reintroduced as judged necessary by the physicians, yet most of the group sustained their reductions until the end of the 12 weeks.

Had the primary endpoint instead specified a threshold of 130 mm Hg for BP control, which is more consistent with SPRINT and some guidelines in the United States, “the deprescribing strategy would have failed to be considered noninferior to usual care” as calculated by the OPTIMISE authors themselves, observed an accompanying editorial.

The 150 mm Hg threshold chosen by the trialists for the primary endpoint, therefore, “was somewhat of a low bar,” wrote Eric D. Peterson, MD, MPH, of Duke University, Durham, N.C., and Michael W. Rich, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo.

“Here in the UK it wouldn’t be considered a low bar,” Dr. Sheppard said in an interview. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in Britain “recommends that you treat people over the age of 18 regardless of whether they have any other conditions and to 150 mm Hg systolic.”

The study’s general practitioners, he said, “did what we told them to do, and as a result, two-thirds of the patients were able to reduce their medications. If we had a lower threshold for treatment, it’s possible that more patients might have had medications reintroduced. I think you still could have potentially ended up with a noninferior result.”

Participating physicians were instructed to enroll only “patients who, in their opinion, might potentially benefit from medication reduction due to one or more of the following existing characteristics: polypharmacy, comorbidity, nonadherence or dislike of medicines, or frailty,” the report notes.

They chose which antihypertensives would be dropped for each patient and “were given a medication reduction algorithm to assist with this decision.” Physicians also followed a guide for monitoring for safety issues and were told to reintroduce medications if systolic BP exceeded 150 mm Hg or diastolic BP rose above 90 mm Hg for more than 1 week or in the event of adverse events or signs of accelerated hypertension, the group wrote.

In the deprescription group, the mean systolic BP rose 4.3 points from baseline to 12 weeks, from 129.4 to 133.7 mm Hg. For those given usual care, mean systolic BP went from 130.5 to 130.8 mm Hg. Adjusted, the mean change in systolic BP was 3.4 mm Hg greater (P = .005) in the intervention group. The corresponding adjusted mean change in diastolic BP was a 2.2 mm Hg increase in the intervention group (P = .001).

Although the difference seems minimal, wrote Dr. Peterson and Dr. Rich, “such differences in BP can potentially lead to long-term differences in outcomes at the population level.”

Also, they pointed out, only about 10% of patients screened for enrollment actually entered the study, which brings into question the study’s generalizability, and “patients in the trial had relatively well-controlled BP at baseline.”

Dr. Sheppard said patients in the original screened population, taken from a national database, were directly invited to participate en masse by conventional mail, based on broad inclusion criteria. Far more than the number needed were invited, and nearly all of those excluded from the study had simply not responded to the invitation.

As for greater increases in systolic and diastolic pressures in the deprescribing group, the OPTIMISE authors acknowledged that “caution should be exercised when adopting this approach in routine clinical practice.”

His own view, Dr. Sheppard said, “is that there are some patients who will definitely benefit from intensive blood pressure lowering like you saw in the SPRINT trial. And there’s other patients who will benefit from deprescribing and having a slightly higher target. Those sorts of things very much need to be individualized at the patient level.”

And ideally, he added, clinicians in practice should probably be even more selective in choosing patients for a deprescribing strategy, “and focus on people who are at the highest risk of adverse events.”

Dr. Sheppard has disclosed no relevant financial relationships; disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Dr. Peterson disclosed receiving personal fees from Cerner and Livongo and grants and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Amgen; Dr. Rick has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
 

Some patients aged 80 years or older can potentially cut back on their number of antihypertensive meds, under physician guidance, without an important loss of blood pressure (BP) control, researchers concluded based on their randomized multicenter trial.

Deprescription of one of at least two antihypertensive meds in such patients was found noninferior to usual care in keeping systolic BP below 150 mm Hg at 12 weeks, in the study that randomly assigned only patients who were considered appropriate for BP-med reduction by their primary care physicians.

Major trials that have shaped some contemporary hypertension guidelines, notably SPRINT, in general have not included such older patients with hypertension along with other chronic conditions, such as diabetes or a history of stroke. So “it’s difficult to know whether their data are relevant for frail, multimorbid patients. In fact, the guidelines say you should use some clinical judgment when applying the results of SPRINT to the kind of patients seen in clinical practice,” James P. Sheppard, PhD, of University of Oxford (England) said in an interview.

The current study, called Optimising Treatment for Mild Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly (OPTIMISE), entered “patients in whom the benefits of taking blood pressure-lowering treatments might start to be outweighed by the potential harms,” Dr. Sheppard said.

The trial is meant to provide something of an otherwise-scant evidence base for how to deprescribe antihypertensive medications, said Dr. Sheppard, who is lead author on the report published May 25 in JAMA.

Of the trial’s 282 patients randomly assigned to the drug-reduction group, 86.4% reached the primary endpoint goal of systolic BP less than 150 mm Hg, compared with 87.7% of the 287 patients on usual care, a difference which in adjusted analysis met the predetermined standard for noninferiority.

The intervention group reduced its number of antihypertensive agents by a mean of 0.6 per patient, which the authors described as “a modest reduction.” However, they noted, drugs that were taken away could be reintroduced as judged necessary by the physicians, yet most of the group sustained their reductions until the end of the 12 weeks.

Had the primary endpoint instead specified a threshold of 130 mm Hg for BP control, which is more consistent with SPRINT and some guidelines in the United States, “the deprescribing strategy would have failed to be considered noninferior to usual care” as calculated by the OPTIMISE authors themselves, observed an accompanying editorial.

The 150 mm Hg threshold chosen by the trialists for the primary endpoint, therefore, “was somewhat of a low bar,” wrote Eric D. Peterson, MD, MPH, of Duke University, Durham, N.C., and Michael W. Rich, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo.

“Here in the UK it wouldn’t be considered a low bar,” Dr. Sheppard said in an interview. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in Britain “recommends that you treat people over the age of 18 regardless of whether they have any other conditions and to 150 mm Hg systolic.”

The study’s general practitioners, he said, “did what we told them to do, and as a result, two-thirds of the patients were able to reduce their medications. If we had a lower threshold for treatment, it’s possible that more patients might have had medications reintroduced. I think you still could have potentially ended up with a noninferior result.”

Participating physicians were instructed to enroll only “patients who, in their opinion, might potentially benefit from medication reduction due to one or more of the following existing characteristics: polypharmacy, comorbidity, nonadherence or dislike of medicines, or frailty,” the report notes.

They chose which antihypertensives would be dropped for each patient and “were given a medication reduction algorithm to assist with this decision.” Physicians also followed a guide for monitoring for safety issues and were told to reintroduce medications if systolic BP exceeded 150 mm Hg or diastolic BP rose above 90 mm Hg for more than 1 week or in the event of adverse events or signs of accelerated hypertension, the group wrote.

In the deprescription group, the mean systolic BP rose 4.3 points from baseline to 12 weeks, from 129.4 to 133.7 mm Hg. For those given usual care, mean systolic BP went from 130.5 to 130.8 mm Hg. Adjusted, the mean change in systolic BP was 3.4 mm Hg greater (P = .005) in the intervention group. The corresponding adjusted mean change in diastolic BP was a 2.2 mm Hg increase in the intervention group (P = .001).

Although the difference seems minimal, wrote Dr. Peterson and Dr. Rich, “such differences in BP can potentially lead to long-term differences in outcomes at the population level.”

Also, they pointed out, only about 10% of patients screened for enrollment actually entered the study, which brings into question the study’s generalizability, and “patients in the trial had relatively well-controlled BP at baseline.”

Dr. Sheppard said patients in the original screened population, taken from a national database, were directly invited to participate en masse by conventional mail, based on broad inclusion criteria. Far more than the number needed were invited, and nearly all of those excluded from the study had simply not responded to the invitation.

As for greater increases in systolic and diastolic pressures in the deprescribing group, the OPTIMISE authors acknowledged that “caution should be exercised when adopting this approach in routine clinical practice.”

His own view, Dr. Sheppard said, “is that there are some patients who will definitely benefit from intensive blood pressure lowering like you saw in the SPRINT trial. And there’s other patients who will benefit from deprescribing and having a slightly higher target. Those sorts of things very much need to be individualized at the patient level.”

And ideally, he added, clinicians in practice should probably be even more selective in choosing patients for a deprescribing strategy, “and focus on people who are at the highest risk of adverse events.”

Dr. Sheppard has disclosed no relevant financial relationships; disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Dr. Peterson disclosed receiving personal fees from Cerner and Livongo and grants and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Amgen; Dr. Rick has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
 

Some patients aged 80 years or older can potentially cut back on their number of antihypertensive meds, under physician guidance, without an important loss of blood pressure (BP) control, researchers concluded based on their randomized multicenter trial.

Deprescription of one of at least two antihypertensive meds in such patients was found noninferior to usual care in keeping systolic BP below 150 mm Hg at 12 weeks, in the study that randomly assigned only patients who were considered appropriate for BP-med reduction by their primary care physicians.

Major trials that have shaped some contemporary hypertension guidelines, notably SPRINT, in general have not included such older patients with hypertension along with other chronic conditions, such as diabetes or a history of stroke. So “it’s difficult to know whether their data are relevant for frail, multimorbid patients. In fact, the guidelines say you should use some clinical judgment when applying the results of SPRINT to the kind of patients seen in clinical practice,” James P. Sheppard, PhD, of University of Oxford (England) said in an interview.

The current study, called Optimising Treatment for Mild Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly (OPTIMISE), entered “patients in whom the benefits of taking blood pressure-lowering treatments might start to be outweighed by the potential harms,” Dr. Sheppard said.

The trial is meant to provide something of an otherwise-scant evidence base for how to deprescribe antihypertensive medications, said Dr. Sheppard, who is lead author on the report published May 25 in JAMA.

Of the trial’s 282 patients randomly assigned to the drug-reduction group, 86.4% reached the primary endpoint goal of systolic BP less than 150 mm Hg, compared with 87.7% of the 287 patients on usual care, a difference which in adjusted analysis met the predetermined standard for noninferiority.

The intervention group reduced its number of antihypertensive agents by a mean of 0.6 per patient, which the authors described as “a modest reduction.” However, they noted, drugs that were taken away could be reintroduced as judged necessary by the physicians, yet most of the group sustained their reductions until the end of the 12 weeks.

Had the primary endpoint instead specified a threshold of 130 mm Hg for BP control, which is more consistent with SPRINT and some guidelines in the United States, “the deprescribing strategy would have failed to be considered noninferior to usual care” as calculated by the OPTIMISE authors themselves, observed an accompanying editorial.

The 150 mm Hg threshold chosen by the trialists for the primary endpoint, therefore, “was somewhat of a low bar,” wrote Eric D. Peterson, MD, MPH, of Duke University, Durham, N.C., and Michael W. Rich, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Mo.

“Here in the UK it wouldn’t be considered a low bar,” Dr. Sheppard said in an interview. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in Britain “recommends that you treat people over the age of 18 regardless of whether they have any other conditions and to 150 mm Hg systolic.”

The study’s general practitioners, he said, “did what we told them to do, and as a result, two-thirds of the patients were able to reduce their medications. If we had a lower threshold for treatment, it’s possible that more patients might have had medications reintroduced. I think you still could have potentially ended up with a noninferior result.”

Participating physicians were instructed to enroll only “patients who, in their opinion, might potentially benefit from medication reduction due to one or more of the following existing characteristics: polypharmacy, comorbidity, nonadherence or dislike of medicines, or frailty,” the report notes.

They chose which antihypertensives would be dropped for each patient and “were given a medication reduction algorithm to assist with this decision.” Physicians also followed a guide for monitoring for safety issues and were told to reintroduce medications if systolic BP exceeded 150 mm Hg or diastolic BP rose above 90 mm Hg for more than 1 week or in the event of adverse events or signs of accelerated hypertension, the group wrote.

In the deprescription group, the mean systolic BP rose 4.3 points from baseline to 12 weeks, from 129.4 to 133.7 mm Hg. For those given usual care, mean systolic BP went from 130.5 to 130.8 mm Hg. Adjusted, the mean change in systolic BP was 3.4 mm Hg greater (P = .005) in the intervention group. The corresponding adjusted mean change in diastolic BP was a 2.2 mm Hg increase in the intervention group (P = .001).

Although the difference seems minimal, wrote Dr. Peterson and Dr. Rich, “such differences in BP can potentially lead to long-term differences in outcomes at the population level.”

Also, they pointed out, only about 10% of patients screened for enrollment actually entered the study, which brings into question the study’s generalizability, and “patients in the trial had relatively well-controlled BP at baseline.”

Dr. Sheppard said patients in the original screened population, taken from a national database, were directly invited to participate en masse by conventional mail, based on broad inclusion criteria. Far more than the number needed were invited, and nearly all of those excluded from the study had simply not responded to the invitation.

As for greater increases in systolic and diastolic pressures in the deprescribing group, the OPTIMISE authors acknowledged that “caution should be exercised when adopting this approach in routine clinical practice.”

His own view, Dr. Sheppard said, “is that there are some patients who will definitely benefit from intensive blood pressure lowering like you saw in the SPRINT trial. And there’s other patients who will benefit from deprescribing and having a slightly higher target. Those sorts of things very much need to be individualized at the patient level.”

And ideally, he added, clinicians in practice should probably be even more selective in choosing patients for a deprescribing strategy, “and focus on people who are at the highest risk of adverse events.”

Dr. Sheppard has disclosed no relevant financial relationships; disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Dr. Peterson disclosed receiving personal fees from Cerner and Livongo and grants and personal fees from AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Amgen; Dr. Rick has disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
 

The Food and Drug Administration has come through with the widely anticipated approval of dapagliflozin (Farxiga, AstraZeneca) for heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), adding to the rich array of medications lately available for this indication.

The approval follows the agency’s priority review of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death and heart-failure hospitalization in adults with HFrEF following last year’s seminal results of the DAPA-HF trial.

In that study, treatment with dapagliflozin led to about a one-fourth reduction in risk of a primary endpoint consisting primarily of CV death or heart failure hospitalization in patients with chronic HFrEF, in both those with and without diabetes. The randomized, placebo-controlled trial had entered more than 4,700 patients.

Soon after, the FDA approved dapagliflozin for reducing the risk of heart failure hospitalization in adults with type 2 diabetes and other CV risk factors.

And of course, dapagliflozin – traditionally viewed only as an antidiabetic agent – has long been indicated for improvement of glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.

The latest approval for patients with New York Heart Association functional class III-IV HFrEF makes dapagliflozin the only SGLT2 inhibitor to be indicated for heart failure in the absence of diabetes.

Soon after the DAPA-HF results had been unveiled at a major meeting, heart failure expert Christopher O’Connor, MD, expressed concern that dapagliflozin’s uptake for patients with HFrEF would be slow once it gained approval for patients without diabetes.

“We have to think of this as a drug that you would prescribe like an ACE inhibitor, or a beta-blocker, or a mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, or sacubitril/valsartan [Entresto, Novartis],” Dr. O’Connor, of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, Falls Church, Va., said in an interview.

Dr. O’Connor was not associated with DAPA-HF and had previously disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has come through with the widely anticipated approval of dapagliflozin (Farxiga, AstraZeneca) for heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), adding to the rich array of medications lately available for this indication.

The approval follows the agency’s priority review of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death and heart-failure hospitalization in adults with HFrEF following last year’s seminal results of the DAPA-HF trial.

In that study, treatment with dapagliflozin led to about a one-fourth reduction in risk of a primary endpoint consisting primarily of CV death or heart failure hospitalization in patients with chronic HFrEF, in both those with and without diabetes. The randomized, placebo-controlled trial had entered more than 4,700 patients.

Soon after, the FDA approved dapagliflozin for reducing the risk of heart failure hospitalization in adults with type 2 diabetes and other CV risk factors.

And of course, dapagliflozin – traditionally viewed only as an antidiabetic agent – has long been indicated for improvement of glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.

The latest approval for patients with New York Heart Association functional class III-IV HFrEF makes dapagliflozin the only SGLT2 inhibitor to be indicated for heart failure in the absence of diabetes.

Soon after the DAPA-HF results had been unveiled at a major meeting, heart failure expert Christopher O’Connor, MD, expressed concern that dapagliflozin’s uptake for patients with HFrEF would be slow once it gained approval for patients without diabetes.

“We have to think of this as a drug that you would prescribe like an ACE inhibitor, or a beta-blocker, or a mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, or sacubitril/valsartan [Entresto, Novartis],” Dr. O’Connor, of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, Falls Church, Va., said in an interview.

Dr. O’Connor was not associated with DAPA-HF and had previously disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The Food and Drug Administration has come through with the widely anticipated approval of dapagliflozin (Farxiga, AstraZeneca) for heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF), adding to the rich array of medications lately available for this indication.

The approval follows the agency’s priority review of the sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor for reducing the risk of cardiovascular death and heart-failure hospitalization in adults with HFrEF following last year’s seminal results of the DAPA-HF trial.

In that study, treatment with dapagliflozin led to about a one-fourth reduction in risk of a primary endpoint consisting primarily of CV death or heart failure hospitalization in patients with chronic HFrEF, in both those with and without diabetes. The randomized, placebo-controlled trial had entered more than 4,700 patients.

Soon after, the FDA approved dapagliflozin for reducing the risk of heart failure hospitalization in adults with type 2 diabetes and other CV risk factors.

And of course, dapagliflozin – traditionally viewed only as an antidiabetic agent – has long been indicated for improvement of glycemic control in adults with type 2 diabetes.

The latest approval for patients with New York Heart Association functional class III-IV HFrEF makes dapagliflozin the only SGLT2 inhibitor to be indicated for heart failure in the absence of diabetes.

Soon after the DAPA-HF results had been unveiled at a major meeting, heart failure expert Christopher O’Connor, MD, expressed concern that dapagliflozin’s uptake for patients with HFrEF would be slow once it gained approval for patients without diabetes.

“We have to think of this as a drug that you would prescribe like an ACE inhibitor, or a beta-blocker, or a mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist, or sacubitril/valsartan [Entresto, Novartis],” Dr. O’Connor, of the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, Falls Church, Va., said in an interview.

Dr. O’Connor was not associated with DAPA-HF and had previously disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.

The guidelines allow for the addition of short-term clopidogrel to an oral anticoagulant (OAC) in patients with an established OAC indication, such as atrial fibrillation (AF), who undergo transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). But does the extra antithrombotic protection come with safety issues?

It apparently did in the POPULAR-TAVI trial, which saw an excess of major and minor bleeding in such patients already on an OAC when they underwent TAVR and who then took the antiplatelet agent for the next 3 months.

The patients who instead continued on their OAC as the only post-TAVR antithrombotic, compared with those on double therapy, showed a 37% lower 1-year risk of any bleeding, including major and disabling bleeding.

Importantly, they didn’t seem to pay a price in excess ischemic events, such as stroke or myocardial infarction (MI).

The trial argues against adding clopidogrel on top of OAC in TAVR patients with an OAC indication in order to reduce their risk of bleeding, Jurriën ten Berg, MD, PhD, St. Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

Whether the ischemic event risk was comparable with and without clopidogrel is less clear. “As the study is not powered for the ischemic end points, the answer is less definite. But we did not see a hint of a higher ischemic event rate, especially stroke, in the OAC-alone group,” ten Berg said.

“So we are pretty confident in saying that OAC alone is the optimal treatment.”

The results of POPULAR-TAVI were presented by Vincent Nijenhuis, MD, also from St. Antonius Hospital, on March 29 during the virtual presentation of the American College of Cardiology 2020 Scientific Session/World Congress of Cardiology. Nijenhuis is also first author on the trial’s simultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The only reason to add an antiplatelet in TAVR patients who need to be on an OAC for another indication is to prevent ischemic events like MI, stroke, or death, agreed George D. Dangas, MD, PhD, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, for theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

But that protection apparently wasn’t needed; for patients on OAC only, “the overall risk–benefit ratio was favorable for them both ways. Although the study is small, I think the findings would be clinically meaningful,” said Dangas, who was not involved in POPULAR-TAVI but was lead author on the GALILEO trial publication.

GALILEO tested a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) against dual antiplatelet therapy in patients undergoing TAVR but without a conventional OAC indication. The trial was halted because the DOAC group started to show an excess of bleeding, thromboembolic events, and mortality.

Most POPULAR-TAVI patients were on vitamin K antagonists, but about a quarter were taking DOACs. Clopidogrel was given on an open-label basis.

The trial suggests that, for TAVR patients with an indication for lifelong OAC, “it does appear to be safe to give only an anticoagulant, whether it’s warfarin or a DOAC, and not add clopidogrel,” Robert O. Bonow, MD, Northwestern University, Chicago, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“The bottom line appears to be that it’s no worse, and is probably better in terms of bleeding events,” said Bonow, who wasn’t involved in POPULAR-TAVI.

But there are difficulties in interpreting the trial that stem from its design and other issues, he said. For example, it can’t really be concluded that adding an antiplatelet agent to OAC in such patients who undergo TAVR, according to commonly practiced techniques, will increase the risk of bleeding compared with OAC alone.

To begin with, Bonow said, substituting aspirin for clopidogrel might have produced better double-therapy results. But the bigger issues, Bonow said, center on the discretion its operators had in whether to maintain or suspend the patients’ OAC during the TAVR procedure, as well as the unusual bleeding definitions used in the trial.

The first POPULAR-TAVI primary end point was any bleeding that met Valve Academic Research Consortium (VARC) criteria; the second was nonprocedural bleeding that met the Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) definition.

“Because the VARC-2 classification does not distinguish between procedure-related and nonprocedure-related bleeding events, procedure-related events were defined as BARC type 4 severe bleeding,” the trial’s journal report states. Therefore, “most bleeding at the puncture site was counted as nonprocedure-related.”

It may be Bonow’s biggest issue with the trial, he said. “They’re terming these events that occurred periprocedurally, in the first day or first hours of the procedure, as being ‘nonprocedural’ because they didn’t represent severe BARC bleeding, where you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage or require transfusions.”

An editorial accompanying the trial report also knocks this aspect of the trial design. Although the trial “confirmed” a higher incidence of any bleeding in the double-therapy group, “there are concerns regarding the classification of bleeding and the reliability of secondary outcome analysis,” writes Frederick Feit, MD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York City.

“Bleeding occurring during TAVI or the index hospitalization was unadvisedly defined as non-procedure related, even if it occurred at the access site,” the editorial notes.

Ten Berg noted that procedural bleeding is frequent in TAVI, but the VARC-2 definition doesn’t accommodate them. So “we also used the BARC definition for procedural bleeding, BARC-4,” he told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“However, BARC-4 describes bleeding during surgery, and it turned out that in POPULAR- TAVI only one patient had BARC-4 bleeding. So we do not at all agree with the editorial.”

Still, the trial’s reported event-rate curves show that “most of the step-up in bleeding, in either arm of the trial, occurred immediately,” Bonow observed. A more consistent, flat trend followed thereafter out to 3 months.

“So half of the bleeding in both arms of the trial occurred at the site of the arterial puncture. Though it wasn’t considered severe, it was indeed periprocedural,” Bonow said, interpreting the results.

The POPULAR-TAVI journal report says the procedures were performed according to local site protocols, and site physicians were allowed to decide whether to continue or suspend OAC. But “the trial protocol advised physicians to continue oral anticoagulation during admission for the TAVI procedure.”

Many of the patients, regardless of randomization group, “went through the procedure under full anticoagulation,” Dangas agreed. POPULAR-TAVI, it seems, “is the first anticoagulation study ever to start anticoagulation before the procedure.”

Bleeding event rates in the trial “are somewhat high because of this unusual procedural feature of the study,” Dangas said.

“It’s therefore not surprising that so much of the bleeding occurred in the first hours of the procedure itself,” observed Bonow.

The trial enrolled 313 patients in four European countries who were on OAC for an approved indication, predominantly AF, and underwent TAVR. Their mean age was about 81 years, and 45.4% were women. They were randomly assigned to receive or not receive clopidogrel in a loading dose, followed by 75 mg/d on top of their OAC for 3 months, and were followed out to a year.

All bleeding that met VARC-2 criteria, the first primary end point, occurred in 21.7% of the 157 patients on OAC alone and 34.6% of the 156 who received double therapy (risk ratio [RR], 0.63; 95% CI, 0.43 - 0.90; P = .011).

The second primary end point, “nonprocedural” bleeding that met BARC-4 criteria, occurred in 21.7% and 34.0%, respectively, of patients (RR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.44 - 0.92; P = .015).

There were also two secondary composite outcomes. The first consisted of nonprocedural bleeding, cardiovascular (CV) death, any stroke, and MI, and was seen in 31.2% of patients on OAC alone and 45.5% of those on OAC plus clopidogrel (RR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51 - 0.92), an absolute difference that was within the prospectively defined noninferiority margins.

The other secondary end point — CV death, ischemic stroke, and MI — occurred in 13.4% of those receiving only OAC and 17.3% on added clopidogrel (RR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.46 - 1.31), which was nonsignificant for superiority.

“Could they have done better by holding the anticoagulation, whether warfarin or a DOAC, during that time? That’s what I think many centers might do if they’re performing a TAVR,” Bonow said.

“It seems to me that could have been done in this trial as well: they could have stopped the anticoagulation, done the procedure, and started the anticoagulation after, the way you would normally in a patient getting a TAVR.”

Such a practice might have reduced the risk of procedural bleeding as it is usually defined in TAVR in both groups, thereby potentially blunting any difference in bleeding rate between the two groups.

“That’s my take on it.” Still, he said, the trial’s message remains: OAC without clopidogrel is safe in POPULAR-TAVI-like patients.

Nijenhuis had no disclosures. Ten Berg disclosed no industry ties. Disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Bonow has previously reported no disclosures. Dangas has previously disclosed receiving grants and fees from Bayer, fees from Janssen; grants and personal fees from Daiichi-Sankyo; and other compensation from Medtronic. Feit discloses personal fees from Abbott Vascular and other relationships with Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Sapheon.

This article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The guidelines allow for the addition of short-term clopidogrel to an oral anticoagulant (OAC) in patients with an established OAC indication, such as atrial fibrillation (AF), who undergo transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). But does the extra antithrombotic protection come with safety issues?

It apparently did in the POPULAR-TAVI trial, which saw an excess of major and minor bleeding in such patients already on an OAC when they underwent TAVR and who then took the antiplatelet agent for the next 3 months.

The patients who instead continued on their OAC as the only post-TAVR antithrombotic, compared with those on double therapy, showed a 37% lower 1-year risk of any bleeding, including major and disabling bleeding.

Importantly, they didn’t seem to pay a price in excess ischemic events, such as stroke or myocardial infarction (MI).

The trial argues against adding clopidogrel on top of OAC in TAVR patients with an OAC indication in order to reduce their risk of bleeding, Jurriën ten Berg, MD, PhD, St. Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

Whether the ischemic event risk was comparable with and without clopidogrel is less clear. “As the study is not powered for the ischemic end points, the answer is less definite. But we did not see a hint of a higher ischemic event rate, especially stroke, in the OAC-alone group,” ten Berg said.

“So we are pretty confident in saying that OAC alone is the optimal treatment.”

The results of POPULAR-TAVI were presented by Vincent Nijenhuis, MD, also from St. Antonius Hospital, on March 29 during the virtual presentation of the American College of Cardiology 2020 Scientific Session/World Congress of Cardiology. Nijenhuis is also first author on the trial’s simultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The only reason to add an antiplatelet in TAVR patients who need to be on an OAC for another indication is to prevent ischemic events like MI, stroke, or death, agreed George D. Dangas, MD, PhD, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, for theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

But that protection apparently wasn’t needed; for patients on OAC only, “the overall risk–benefit ratio was favorable for them both ways. Although the study is small, I think the findings would be clinically meaningful,” said Dangas, who was not involved in POPULAR-TAVI but was lead author on the GALILEO trial publication.

GALILEO tested a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) against dual antiplatelet therapy in patients undergoing TAVR but without a conventional OAC indication. The trial was halted because the DOAC group started to show an excess of bleeding, thromboembolic events, and mortality.

Most POPULAR-TAVI patients were on vitamin K antagonists, but about a quarter were taking DOACs. Clopidogrel was given on an open-label basis.

The trial suggests that, for TAVR patients with an indication for lifelong OAC, “it does appear to be safe to give only an anticoagulant, whether it’s warfarin or a DOAC, and not add clopidogrel,” Robert O. Bonow, MD, Northwestern University, Chicago, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“The bottom line appears to be that it’s no worse, and is probably better in terms of bleeding events,” said Bonow, who wasn’t involved in POPULAR-TAVI.

But there are difficulties in interpreting the trial that stem from its design and other issues, he said. For example, it can’t really be concluded that adding an antiplatelet agent to OAC in such patients who undergo TAVR, according to commonly practiced techniques, will increase the risk of bleeding compared with OAC alone.

To begin with, Bonow said, substituting aspirin for clopidogrel might have produced better double-therapy results. But the bigger issues, Bonow said, center on the discretion its operators had in whether to maintain or suspend the patients’ OAC during the TAVR procedure, as well as the unusual bleeding definitions used in the trial.

The first POPULAR-TAVI primary end point was any bleeding that met Valve Academic Research Consortium (VARC) criteria; the second was nonprocedural bleeding that met the Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) definition.

“Because the VARC-2 classification does not distinguish between procedure-related and nonprocedure-related bleeding events, procedure-related events were defined as BARC type 4 severe bleeding,” the trial’s journal report states. Therefore, “most bleeding at the puncture site was counted as nonprocedure-related.”

It may be Bonow’s biggest issue with the trial, he said. “They’re terming these events that occurred periprocedurally, in the first day or first hours of the procedure, as being ‘nonprocedural’ because they didn’t represent severe BARC bleeding, where you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage or require transfusions.”

An editorial accompanying the trial report also knocks this aspect of the trial design. Although the trial “confirmed” a higher incidence of any bleeding in the double-therapy group, “there are concerns regarding the classification of bleeding and the reliability of secondary outcome analysis,” writes Frederick Feit, MD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York City.

“Bleeding occurring during TAVI or the index hospitalization was unadvisedly defined as non-procedure related, even if it occurred at the access site,” the editorial notes.

Ten Berg noted that procedural bleeding is frequent in TAVI, but the VARC-2 definition doesn’t accommodate them. So “we also used the BARC definition for procedural bleeding, BARC-4,” he told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“However, BARC-4 describes bleeding during surgery, and it turned out that in POPULAR- TAVI only one patient had BARC-4 bleeding. So we do not at all agree with the editorial.”

Still, the trial’s reported event-rate curves show that “most of the step-up in bleeding, in either arm of the trial, occurred immediately,” Bonow observed. A more consistent, flat trend followed thereafter out to 3 months.

“So half of the bleeding in both arms of the trial occurred at the site of the arterial puncture. Though it wasn’t considered severe, it was indeed periprocedural,” Bonow said, interpreting the results.

The POPULAR-TAVI journal report says the procedures were performed according to local site protocols, and site physicians were allowed to decide whether to continue or suspend OAC. But “the trial protocol advised physicians to continue oral anticoagulation during admission for the TAVI procedure.”

Many of the patients, regardless of randomization group, “went through the procedure under full anticoagulation,” Dangas agreed. POPULAR-TAVI, it seems, “is the first anticoagulation study ever to start anticoagulation before the procedure.”

Bleeding event rates in the trial “are somewhat high because of this unusual procedural feature of the study,” Dangas said.

“It’s therefore not surprising that so much of the bleeding occurred in the first hours of the procedure itself,” observed Bonow.

The trial enrolled 313 patients in four European countries who were on OAC for an approved indication, predominantly AF, and underwent TAVR. Their mean age was about 81 years, and 45.4% were women. They were randomly assigned to receive or not receive clopidogrel in a loading dose, followed by 75 mg/d on top of their OAC for 3 months, and were followed out to a year.

All bleeding that met VARC-2 criteria, the first primary end point, occurred in 21.7% of the 157 patients on OAC alone and 34.6% of the 156 who received double therapy (risk ratio [RR], 0.63; 95% CI, 0.43 - 0.90; P = .011).

The second primary end point, “nonprocedural” bleeding that met BARC-4 criteria, occurred in 21.7% and 34.0%, respectively, of patients (RR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.44 - 0.92; P = .015).

There were also two secondary composite outcomes. The first consisted of nonprocedural bleeding, cardiovascular (CV) death, any stroke, and MI, and was seen in 31.2% of patients on OAC alone and 45.5% of those on OAC plus clopidogrel (RR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51 - 0.92), an absolute difference that was within the prospectively defined noninferiority margins.

The other secondary end point — CV death, ischemic stroke, and MI — occurred in 13.4% of those receiving only OAC and 17.3% on added clopidogrel (RR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.46 - 1.31), which was nonsignificant for superiority.

“Could they have done better by holding the anticoagulation, whether warfarin or a DOAC, during that time? That’s what I think many centers might do if they’re performing a TAVR,” Bonow said.

“It seems to me that could have been done in this trial as well: they could have stopped the anticoagulation, done the procedure, and started the anticoagulation after, the way you would normally in a patient getting a TAVR.”

Such a practice might have reduced the risk of procedural bleeding as it is usually defined in TAVR in both groups, thereby potentially blunting any difference in bleeding rate between the two groups.

“That’s my take on it.” Still, he said, the trial’s message remains: OAC without clopidogrel is safe in POPULAR-TAVI-like patients.

Nijenhuis had no disclosures. Ten Berg disclosed no industry ties. Disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Bonow has previously reported no disclosures. Dangas has previously disclosed receiving grants and fees from Bayer, fees from Janssen; grants and personal fees from Daiichi-Sankyo; and other compensation from Medtronic. Feit discloses personal fees from Abbott Vascular and other relationships with Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Sapheon.

This article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The guidelines allow for the addition of short-term clopidogrel to an oral anticoagulant (OAC) in patients with an established OAC indication, such as atrial fibrillation (AF), who undergo transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). But does the extra antithrombotic protection come with safety issues?

It apparently did in the POPULAR-TAVI trial, which saw an excess of major and minor bleeding in such patients already on an OAC when they underwent TAVR and who then took the antiplatelet agent for the next 3 months.

The patients who instead continued on their OAC as the only post-TAVR antithrombotic, compared with those on double therapy, showed a 37% lower 1-year risk of any bleeding, including major and disabling bleeding.

Importantly, they didn’t seem to pay a price in excess ischemic events, such as stroke or myocardial infarction (MI).

The trial argues against adding clopidogrel on top of OAC in TAVR patients with an OAC indication in order to reduce their risk of bleeding, Jurriën ten Berg, MD, PhD, St. Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

Whether the ischemic event risk was comparable with and without clopidogrel is less clear. “As the study is not powered for the ischemic end points, the answer is less definite. But we did not see a hint of a higher ischemic event rate, especially stroke, in the OAC-alone group,” ten Berg said.

“So we are pretty confident in saying that OAC alone is the optimal treatment.”

The results of POPULAR-TAVI were presented by Vincent Nijenhuis, MD, also from St. Antonius Hospital, on March 29 during the virtual presentation of the American College of Cardiology 2020 Scientific Session/World Congress of Cardiology. Nijenhuis is also first author on the trial’s simultaneous publication in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The only reason to add an antiplatelet in TAVR patients who need to be on an OAC for another indication is to prevent ischemic events like MI, stroke, or death, agreed George D. Dangas, MD, PhD, Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, for theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

But that protection apparently wasn’t needed; for patients on OAC only, “the overall risk–benefit ratio was favorable for them both ways. Although the study is small, I think the findings would be clinically meaningful,” said Dangas, who was not involved in POPULAR-TAVI but was lead author on the GALILEO trial publication.

GALILEO tested a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) against dual antiplatelet therapy in patients undergoing TAVR but without a conventional OAC indication. The trial was halted because the DOAC group started to show an excess of bleeding, thromboembolic events, and mortality.

Most POPULAR-TAVI patients were on vitamin K antagonists, but about a quarter were taking DOACs. Clopidogrel was given on an open-label basis.

The trial suggests that, for TAVR patients with an indication for lifelong OAC, “it does appear to be safe to give only an anticoagulant, whether it’s warfarin or a DOAC, and not add clopidogrel,” Robert O. Bonow, MD, Northwestern University, Chicago, told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“The bottom line appears to be that it’s no worse, and is probably better in terms of bleeding events,” said Bonow, who wasn’t involved in POPULAR-TAVI.

But there are difficulties in interpreting the trial that stem from its design and other issues, he said. For example, it can’t really be concluded that adding an antiplatelet agent to OAC in such patients who undergo TAVR, according to commonly practiced techniques, will increase the risk of bleeding compared with OAC alone.

To begin with, Bonow said, substituting aspirin for clopidogrel might have produced better double-therapy results. But the bigger issues, Bonow said, center on the discretion its operators had in whether to maintain or suspend the patients’ OAC during the TAVR procedure, as well as the unusual bleeding definitions used in the trial.

The first POPULAR-TAVI primary end point was any bleeding that met Valve Academic Research Consortium (VARC) criteria; the second was nonprocedural bleeding that met the Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) definition.

“Because the VARC-2 classification does not distinguish between procedure-related and nonprocedure-related bleeding events, procedure-related events were defined as BARC type 4 severe bleeding,” the trial’s journal report states. Therefore, “most bleeding at the puncture site was counted as nonprocedure-related.”

It may be Bonow’s biggest issue with the trial, he said. “They’re terming these events that occurred periprocedurally, in the first day or first hours of the procedure, as being ‘nonprocedural’ because they didn’t represent severe BARC bleeding, where you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage or require transfusions.”

An editorial accompanying the trial report also knocks this aspect of the trial design. Although the trial “confirmed” a higher incidence of any bleeding in the double-therapy group, “there are concerns regarding the classification of bleeding and the reliability of secondary outcome analysis,” writes Frederick Feit, MD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York City.

“Bleeding occurring during TAVI or the index hospitalization was unadvisedly defined as non-procedure related, even if it occurred at the access site,” the editorial notes.

Ten Berg noted that procedural bleeding is frequent in TAVI, but the VARC-2 definition doesn’t accommodate them. So “we also used the BARC definition for procedural bleeding, BARC-4,” he told theheart.org | Medscape Cardiology.

“However, BARC-4 describes bleeding during surgery, and it turned out that in POPULAR- TAVI only one patient had BARC-4 bleeding. So we do not at all agree with the editorial.”

Still, the trial’s reported event-rate curves show that “most of the step-up in bleeding, in either arm of the trial, occurred immediately,” Bonow observed. A more consistent, flat trend followed thereafter out to 3 months.

“So half of the bleeding in both arms of the trial occurred at the site of the arterial puncture. Though it wasn’t considered severe, it was indeed periprocedural,” Bonow said, interpreting the results.

The POPULAR-TAVI journal report says the procedures were performed according to local site protocols, and site physicians were allowed to decide whether to continue or suspend OAC. But “the trial protocol advised physicians to continue oral anticoagulation during admission for the TAVI procedure.”

Many of the patients, regardless of randomization group, “went through the procedure under full anticoagulation,” Dangas agreed. POPULAR-TAVI, it seems, “is the first anticoagulation study ever to start anticoagulation before the procedure.”

Bleeding event rates in the trial “are somewhat high because of this unusual procedural feature of the study,” Dangas said.

“It’s therefore not surprising that so much of the bleeding occurred in the first hours of the procedure itself,” observed Bonow.

The trial enrolled 313 patients in four European countries who were on OAC for an approved indication, predominantly AF, and underwent TAVR. Their mean age was about 81 years, and 45.4% were women. They were randomly assigned to receive or not receive clopidogrel in a loading dose, followed by 75 mg/d on top of their OAC for 3 months, and were followed out to a year.

All bleeding that met VARC-2 criteria, the first primary end point, occurred in 21.7% of the 157 patients on OAC alone and 34.6% of the 156 who received double therapy (risk ratio [RR], 0.63; 95% CI, 0.43 - 0.90; P = .011).

The second primary end point, “nonprocedural” bleeding that met BARC-4 criteria, occurred in 21.7% and 34.0%, respectively, of patients (RR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.44 - 0.92; P = .015).

There were also two secondary composite outcomes. The first consisted of nonprocedural bleeding, cardiovascular (CV) death, any stroke, and MI, and was seen in 31.2% of patients on OAC alone and 45.5% of those on OAC plus clopidogrel (RR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51 - 0.92), an absolute difference that was within the prospectively defined noninferiority margins.

The other secondary end point — CV death, ischemic stroke, and MI — occurred in 13.4% of those receiving only OAC and 17.3% on added clopidogrel (RR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.46 - 1.31), which was nonsignificant for superiority.

“Could they have done better by holding the anticoagulation, whether warfarin or a DOAC, during that time? That’s what I think many centers might do if they’re performing a TAVR,” Bonow said.

“It seems to me that could have been done in this trial as well: they could have stopped the anticoagulation, done the procedure, and started the anticoagulation after, the way you would normally in a patient getting a TAVR.”

Such a practice might have reduced the risk of procedural bleeding as it is usually defined in TAVR in both groups, thereby potentially blunting any difference in bleeding rate between the two groups.

“That’s my take on it.” Still, he said, the trial’s message remains: OAC without clopidogrel is safe in POPULAR-TAVI-like patients.

Nijenhuis had no disclosures. Ten Berg disclosed no industry ties. Disclosures for the other authors are in the report. Bonow has previously reported no disclosures. Dangas has previously disclosed receiving grants and fees from Bayer, fees from Janssen; grants and personal fees from Daiichi-Sankyo; and other compensation from Medtronic. Feit discloses personal fees from Abbott Vascular and other relationships with Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Sapheon.

This article first appeared on Medscape.com.