Article date: October 1984
By: M Arboix, JR Laporte, ME Frati, M Rutllan, in Volume 18, Issue 4, pages 475-479
A group of 690 patients (337 males and 353 females) on long‐term acenocoumarol therapy was studied. 62.8% of the values of the prothrombin ratio were within the chosen therapeutic range (1.8 to 2.7), 21.9% were below 1.8 and 15.3% were above 2.7. The daily maintenance dose, expressed on a weight basis, was found to significantly decrease with increasing age. The daily maintenance dose taken by females was significantly higher than the dose taken by males (P less than 0.05); the differences between males and females were maximal among patients aged between 21 and 50 years, and disappeared at older ages. Two hundred and twenty‐eight haemorrhagic episodes in 160 patients were recorded during a total of 7797 months of follow‐up. No lethal haemorrhages were observed. The overall incidence of bleeding episodes among females (3.6%) was higher than among males (2.2%) (P less than 0.001), even if menorrhagia was excluded (P less than 0.01).
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2125.1984.tb02494.x
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