Introduction:

This systematic review aims to determine the postoperative bleeding risk in patients on oral anticoagulant therapy (OAT) undergoing oral surgical procedures when continuing with the treatment, compared with those modifying or discontinuing the treatment.

Materials and methods:

A search was performed using CENTRAL, Medline and EMBASE, in conjunction with a manual review of indexes of specialized journals and abstracts of the IADR. Study selection, assessments of risk of bias and data extraction were performed independently by 2 reviewers. Randomized clinical trials measuring the occurrence of bleeding in patients on OAT undergoing oral surgical procedures compared with a group discontinuing or modifying their therapy were selected.

Results:

A total of 5 studies were included based on inclusion criteria (549 patients). The meta-analysis showed that the maintenance of OAT does not increases the risk of postoperative bleeding (relative risk [RR] 1.41 [0.93 - 2.16]; 95% CI p= 0,11) compared with the discontinuation of therapy.

Conclusion:

Although a larger quantity of oral postoperative bleeding episodes were found in patients continuing with OAT compared with patients discontinuing or modifying their therapy, this difference was neither statistically nor clinically significant. Therefore, OAT should not be discontinued in patients undergoing oral surgery.

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