Secondary Prevention of Venous Thromboembolism

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), which encompasses deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is now recognized as a chronic recurrent disease. The short-term anticoagulation after VTE includes the initiation phase and the early maintenance phase, for a usual duration of 3 months (Figure 1). Whether to consider an extended phase of anticoagulation in individual patients has become a major challenge for care providers, but logically depends on the risk of VTE recurrence and on that of bleeding.(1) This decision can be further refined by patient preferences, a theoretically highly desirable criterion which however is often difficult to assess objectively, and by the efficacy/safety balance of available therapies