Management of special conditions in patients on vitamin K antagonists

Physicians are occasionally faced with difficult situations in the management of vitamin K antagonists (VKA) due to the lack of sound data available in controlled studies on certain conditions. In this review we would like to address some special but frequent conditions that can be encountered in daily clinical practice. These include the use of VKA in hemodialysis, thromboembolism in patients with liver cirrhosis and the thromboembolic risk in patients who bleed in the course of treatment with VKA. Moreover, two other conditions were examined: what the best way of expressing prothrombin time would be in patients with liver disease and how to behave when a patient treated with VKA shows a subtherapeutic INR. These topics were discussed by a panel of experts during a workshop recently held in Milan by the Italian Federation of Centres for the Diagnosis of Thrombosis and the Surveillance of Antithrombotic Therapies (FCSA). The main aim of the workshop was to provide helpful and practical advice to physicians in the daily management of VKA.