Prolongation of the Interval Between Monitoring of Warfarin in Stable Patients
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2010-02-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Patients with mechanical heart valve prosthesis or with irregular beat (atrial fibrillation)
have a high risk of blood clot formation. Such clots can result in a stroke. The patients are
treated with warfarin - a "blood thinner" - to prevent these complications. The treatment has
to be monitored with a blood test called Prothrombin time (PT) every 1-4 weeks. The dose of
warfarin has to be changed whenever the PT result is outside of the treatment range. If the
result is too low there is an increased risk of blood clots. If, instead, the result is too
high there is a risk of bleeding. One third of the patients have very stable PT results and
hardly ever have to change the dose.
The investigators hypothesis is that these patients can go less often, e.g. every 12 weeks,
for the blood tests.