Managing oral anticoagulant therapy in patients with mechanical heart valves undergoing elective surgery

The optimal perioperative anticoagulation management in patients on warfarin therapy is poorly defined because of the lack of randomized trials. Because guidelines are heterogeneous, we hypothesized that treatment strategies are not uniform in clinical practice. During the Annual Meeting of the Italian Federation of Anticoagulation Clinics, a questionnaire with four different clinical scenarios was distributed. Two scenarios described the cases …