Endoscopic Biopsy in Patients Exposed to Direct Oral Anticoagulants Is Claimed To Be Safe

Patients taking direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) are often considered to be at increased risk for bleeding after therapeutic endoscopic procedures such as polypectomy and sphincterotomy.  On the other hand, cold biopsy is usually considered safe in these patients. The current study sought to test whether DOAC use during endoscopic biopsy is indeed safe. 

The authors used a Japanese national database that included 2679 patients exposed to DOACs and 129,357 control patients not exposed to DOACs who underwent endoscopic biopsy but did not undergo polypectomy, endoscopic mucosal resection, or endoscopic submucosal dissection. For the study, DOAC use was defined as a prescription within 3 months prior to the procedure. It was not clear whether DOACs had been stopped for the procedure, but the authors suggested this was not common practice in Japan. 

Patients receiving DOACs had more comorbidities. In a propensity score analysis, the odds ratio (OR) for postprocedural hemorrhage was 1.52, which did not quite reach significance. The risk of stroke was 1.0, and patients in the DOAC group were more likely to have been treated with thrombin on the day of the procedure (OR, 1.60), which was interpreted as evidence of more immediate hemorrhage during the procedure.