Duration of Anticoagulant Treatment after VenousThromboembolism

The current recommended treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) consists of an initial treatment with heparin (either subcutaneous low-molecular-weight heparin or intravenous unfractionated heparin) relayed with a longterm treatment with oral anticoagulants (INR 2.0 3.0) given for at least three months [1]. The majority of the studies on the long-term treatment of VTE included patients with deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Based on the assumption that DVT and pulmonary embolism (PE) are two manifestations of the same disease, information available for patients with DVT are commonly translated to patients with PE. Recently, several differences regarding the risk for recurrent VTE in patients with DVT and PE have been reported. In particular, it has been shown that patients with PE are at slightly higher risk of dying from recurrent PE than are patients with DVT [2-3]. For this reason, more prolonged anticoagulation has been proposed for patients with PE, but this choice is not evidence based. Need for Shortand Long-Term Anticoagulant Treatment