TY - JOUR AU - Stanciakova, Lucia AU - Dobrotova, Miroslava AU - Plamenova, Ivana AU - Holly, Pavol AU - Bolek, Tomas AU - Samos, Matej AU - Kubisz, Peter AU - Stasko, Jan PY - 2019 TI - Anticoagulation therapy in Slovakia JF - Annals of Blood; Vol 4 (August 2019): Annals of Blood Y2 - 2019 KW - N2 - Anticoagulants can be defined as chemical substances that prevent or reduce blood coagulation. There are several groups of the most important anticoagulant drugs that are used for this purpose—coumarins (vitamin K antagonists), unfractionated heparin (UFH) and low molecular weight heparin, synthetic pentasaccharide inhibitors of activated coagulation factor X, hirudins, hirudinoids and most recently developed the direct oral anticoagulants. In this article, we performed an overview on the actual state of anticoagulation therapy in Slovakia, with the focus on direct oral anticoagulants, as represented by the National Centre of Haemostasis and Thrombosis, which provides the comprehensive care for a substantial group of patients from the Slovak Republic. Therefore, we deal with the characteristics of our patient population (their age, sex, family history, results of thrombophilic screening, and indication for the use of anticoagulant therapy), as well as our experience with administration of direct oral anticoagulants in routine clinical practice, their indications in terms of prevention of venous thromboembolism (VTE), results of measurement of their effectiveness and parameters of the activation of haemostasis, such as quantitative analysis of D-dimer concentration and coagulation factor VIII activity. We cordially hope that this report can be found to be useful for haematologists, vascular and other surgeons, angiologists, cardiologists, neurologists, gynecologists-obstetricians, laboratory experts, researchers and other workers involved in this particular field of study. UR - https://aob.amegroups.org/article/view/5127