Clinical · Conditions

Stopping anticoagulation before an extraction: the risk you're actually trading

Every dentist has been asked to "clear" an anticoagulated patient for an extraction, and many have been told by a well-meaning physician to hold the drug for a few days first. The request feels prudent. It trades a risk you can manage with gauze for a risk you cannot manage at all.

In short

Do not stop warfarin or a direct oral anticoagulant for routine dental surgery, including extractions. Across decades of studies and more than eleven thousand procedures in anticoagulated patients, bleeding requiring more than local measures was rare and never fatal, while interruption for dental procedures has been followed by embolic events including deaths. The bleeding is a problem you can see and control in the chair; the stroke happens at home. Manage bleeding locally, know the INR or the DOAC timing, and reserve any change in therapy for the physician who prescribed it, for the rare case that needs one.

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