Purpose-built for physicians
Taking aspirin alone after total joint arthroplasty may be a noninferior alternative for preventing venous thromboembolism compared with rivaroxaban then aspirin, according to results.
“The message of the safety and efficacy of aspirin alone in patients undergoing hip and knee arthroplasty is a very reasonable one, and now we have evidence to back that up,” Sudeep Shivakumar, MD, a hematologist in the division of hematology and hematologic oncology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, told Healio. “There was no increase in bleeding events, and there was no difference in deaths. Our event rates overall were low.”
In a multicenter, double-blind controlled trial, Shivakumar and colleagues randomly assigned 5,429 patients who underwent total knee or hip arthroplasty to receive either 81 mg of aspirin (n = 2,718) or 10 mg of oral rivaroxaban (n = 2,647) once a day for the first 5 days after surgery. Both groups received further thromboprophylaxis treatment of 81 mg of aspirin for an additional 9 days after TKA or an additional 30 days after THA, according to the study. Researchers observed patients for 90 days for any indication of symptomatic venous thromboembolism, specifically proximal deep-vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism and bleeding complications.
