A Comparative Evaluation of Adverse Drug Events and Incidence of Stroke amongst the Target Specific Oral Anticoagulants

Methods: Retrospective, observational study design. IRB approval was obtained. Inclusion criteria included anticoagulation clinic enrollment, age > 18 years, medication adherence. Exclusion criteria included prior use of TSOAC, renal/liver dysfunction, valvular disease. Oral administration of dabigatran 150 mg twice daily, rivaroxaban 20 mg daily and apixaban 5 mg twice daily were examined. Coprimary outcomes were the number of bleeding and stroke events with dabigatran and rivaroxaban use. Apixaban was excluded due to a small sample size. Secondary outcomes included the number of non-bleeding ADRs, drug-drug interactions, all cause hospitalizations, and time to occurrence of bleeding or non-bleeding ADRs and to occurrence of stroke events.