Minireviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Dec 26, 2015; 5(4): 212-215
Published online Dec 26, 2015. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v5.i4.212
Monitoring anticoagulant therapy with new oral agents
Allan Ramos-Esquivel
Allan Ramos-Esquivel, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of Costa Rica, San José 11501-2060, Costa Rica
Author contributions: The author solely contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are not any conflicts of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Allan Ramos-Esquivel, MD, MSc, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of Costa Rica, Sede Rodrigo Facio, San Pedro Calle 27, San José 11501-2060, Costa Rica. allanramoscr@gmail.com
Telephone: +506-8844-8187 Fax: +506-2237-3930
Received: June 28, 2015
Peer-review started: July 5, 2015
First decision: July 28, 2015
Revised: September 22, 2015
Accepted: October 12, 2015
Article in press: October 13, 2015
Published online: December 26, 2015
Core Tip

Core tip: New oral anticoagulants are replacing oral vitamin K antagonists for some practical advantages, like unnecessary monitoring and a better pharmacokinetic profile. Nevertheless, in some circumstances, their anticoagulant activity must be monitored in order to prevent adverse outcomes. In this minireview a list of the available laboratory test are reviewed to better understand the pros and cons of each analysis.