Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is among the most common life-threatening cardiovascular diseases, in which blood supply to the heart muscles is reduced or completely blocked. Coronary artery disease has various treatment options, one of which is PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention) or stent placement via angioplasty. Dabigatran etexilate is the only orally available direct thrombin inhibitor, which is actually a prodrug that is rapidly converted to its active form and absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract. The purpose of this study is to compare mortality in patients with Atrial Fibrillation (AF) with a history of Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) treated with a low dose (110 mg). In contrast, it was treated with a high dose (150 mg).
Methods: The present study was a systematic review and meta-analysis on 4 online databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and EMBASE to find articles that the rate of long-term complications related to bleeding or Thrombotic events were performed in AF patients who underwent PCI and were treated with dabigatran. STATA software was used for data analysis.
Results: Nine RCTs or prospective studies with 5694 participants were included. The studies showed that when comparing dabigatran (110 and 150 mg) with warfarin (with/without dual antiplatelet), dabigatran 110 mg was associated with a significant reduction in major bleeding (OR=0.46, 95% CI: 0.24-0.86, P=0.01), while the 150 mg dose was not statistically different (OR=0.12, 95% CI: 0.01-1.32, P=0.08). Also, comparing dabigatran 150 with 110 mg showed a higher risk of bleeding at the higher dose (OR=0.77, 95% CI: 0.64-0.92, P<0.001). On the other hand, dabigatran 110 mg was associated with a significant increase in mortality (OR=1.33, P=0.01) and myocardial infarction (OR=1.61, P=0.01) compared with combination therapy of warfarin and antiplatelet, but the 150 mg dose did not show a statistical difference. Heterogeneity was high in some analyses (I2 up to 99.49%), but funnel plots and Egger's test rejected publication bias.
Conclusion: There seems to be strong evidence that bleeding complications in dabigatran are less than old antiplatelet and anticoagulation drugs, but in terms of efficacy in reducing mortality, although we did not obtain strong evidence for analysis, older drugs are more effective in preventing death from any cause.
