Abstract
Background
A relatively high mortality of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) is worrying, the application of heparin in COVID‐19 has been recommended by some expert consensus due to the risk of disseminated intravascular coagulation and venous thromboembolism. However, its efficacy remains to be validated.
Methods
Coagulation results, medications and outcomes of consecutive patients being classified as severe COVID‐19 in Tongji hospital were retrospectively analysed. The 28‐day mortality between heparin users and nonusers were compared, also in different risk of coagulopaphy which was stratified by the sepsis‐induced coagulopathy (SIC) score or D‐dimer result.
Results
There were 449 patients with severe COVID‐19 enrolled into the study, 99 of them received heparin (mainly with low molecular weight heparin, LMWH) for 7 days or longer. The D‐dimer, prothrombin time and age were positively, and platelet count was negatively, correlated with 28‐day mortality in multivariate analysis. No difference on 28‐day mortality was found between heparin users and nonusers (30.3% vs 29.7%, P=0.910). But the 28‐day mortality of heparin users were lower than nonusers In patients with SIC score ≥4 (40.0% vs 64.2%, P=0.029), or D‐dimer > 6 fold of upper limit of normal (32.8% vs 52.4%, P=0.017).
Conclusions
Anticoagulant therapy mainly with LMWH appears to be associated with better prognosis in severe COVID‐19 patients meeting SIC criteria or with markedly elevated D‐dimer.
Citation: Tang, N., Bai, H., Chen, X., Gong, J., Li, D. and Sun, Z. (2020), Anticoagulant treatment is associated with decreased mortality in severe coronavirus disease 2019 patients with coagulopathy. J Thromb Haemost. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/jth.14817
PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jth.14817
