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A little warfarin goes a long way in stopping clots

Deep vein thrombosis may contribute to as many as 200,000 deaths each year, yet proven preventions and treatments are at hand.

By Susan J. Landers, amednews staff. March 24/31, 2003.

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Washington -- It must have been serendipity.

Just as a group of experts on the prevention and treatment of deep vein thrombosis assembled in Washington, D.C., to devise a plan to boost awareness of the often undiagnosed yet serious condition, news broke of a cheap, safe and effective treatment for blood clots.

New findings that a long-term, low-dose course of warfarin appears to prevent the recurrence of deep vein thrombosis without promoting significant bleeding were applauded by the physicians assembled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Public Health Assn. to discuss DVT.

The findings, to be published in the April 10 New England Journal of Medicine (available now online), are likely to influence the course of treatment provided to thousands of patients at risk for the sometimes fatal blood clots -- patients whose conditions are often monitored closely by primary care physicians.

The clear benefits of the treatment regimen resulted in the early termination by the National Institutes of Health of its multicenter study of low-dose warfarin.

"This is an important finding for the estimated half-million Americans who each year experience either deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism," said Claude Lenfant, MD, director of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the halted study.

"We have the opportunity now to prevent DVT and pulmonary embolisms," noted Samuel Goldhaber, MD, who served as clinical director of the Prevention of Recurrent Venous Thromboembolism, or PREVENT trial. Dr. Goldhaber, who also directs the Venous Thromboembolism Research Group at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, detailed the scope of the DVT problem to colleagues late last month.