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For patients with essential thrombocythemia who develop venous thrombosis in the setting of elevated platelet counts, would you continue lifelong anticoagulation even after cytoreduction is achieved?

How would you consider anticoagulation vs antiplatelet therapy, or the addition of antiplatelet therapy for these patients?
2 Answers
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Mednet MemberInvited Expert
Medical Oncology · Taussig Cancer Institute
Answered on

This is a fantastic question, a true real-life scenario, with unfortunately little data to drive clinical decision making. What we do have to work with is that the combination of ASA plus anticoagulation increases the risk of bleeding, but does not decrease the risk of recurrent thrombosis in MPNs. ...

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Mednet Member
Mednet MemberInvited Expert
Hematology · Johns Hopkins University
Answered on

My first instinct upon reading this question is to express my suspicion that any ET patient who has a venous thrombosis may actually have polycythemia vera (PV), regardless of the height of the platelet count. My reasons for being suspicious are many. First, there is no correlation in true ET betwee...

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