Abstract 13427: Bleeding in Morbidly Obese Patients Treated With Direct Oral Anticoagulants Compared to Warfarin: The Michigan Anticoagulation Quality Improvement Initiative Experience

Abstract

Introduction: Direct Oral Anticoagulants (DOACs) have overtaken warfarin in the treatment of non-valvular Atrial Fibrillation (AF) and venous thromboembolism (VTE). However, there is very limited data that explores the safety of DOACs for patients that are morbidly obese (BMI >40). Methods: In this multi-center retrospective study, we sought to use the Michigan Anticoagulation Quality Improvement registry (MAQI) to see how treatment of non-valvular AF or VTE with DOAC vs. warfarin affects bleeding in morbidly obese patients. Specifically, we compared average major, clinically relevant non-major (CRNM), and minor bleeding events per 100 patient years that were adjusted for statistically significant baseline characteristics (p<0.05). Results: There were a total of 1028 patients with BMI >40 included in the registry between June 2015 and September 2019. 434 patients were treated with DOACs, while 594 patients were treated with warfarin. Baseline characteristics between the two groups included age (61.5 vs 57.8, p<0.001), gender (63.6% vs 61.1% female, p=0.42), race (76.5% vs 64.3% white, p<0.001), and HAS-BLED score (2.3 vs 2.3, p=0.96). The DOAC treated group had a higher event rate of major (4.3 vs 3.7, p=0.006), CRNM (10.7 vs. 7.4, p=0.002), and minor bleeding (19.1 vs. 13.2 p<0.001) compared to the warfarin treated group. Conclusions: There is a higher rate of major, CRNM, and minor bleeding in morbidly obese patients treated with DOAC compared to warfarin. Further studies to compare the two anticoagulants and understand bleeding drivers in this population are needed.