It’s normal to feel nervous if you are treating a patient with a gastrointestinal bleed who is on an anticoagulant. Yet there are different treatment paradigms when patients present with acute bleeding, and some of the newer anticoagulants could change current thinking, said Colin G. Kaide, MD, FACEP, associate professor of emergency medicine at the Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus.

Dr. Kaide

Dr. Kaide will focus on this topic during his session “Does All Bleeding Really Stop? Reversing New and Old Anticoagulants.”

The session will first provide attendees with a basic understanding of coagulation and anticoagulants. “I firmly believe that if you invest five or six minutes into understanding how the system works at a basic level, then everything else about reversal agents doesn’t have to be memorized. It can be derived from basic understanding,” he said.

Dr. Kaide will then go on to discuss strategies to reverse anticoagulation when patients use traditional medications such as warafin and heparin. The session will then cover some of the novel anticoagulation treatments, such as dabigatran, rivaroxaban, and apixaban.

The session also will address strategies for emergency physicians who don’t have access to newer agents.

The talk will include case-based scenarios and a discussion about the controversy over correcting numbers and bleeding and how they might actually reflect in outcomes. “We need to take a realistic understanding of what we can or can’t accomplish,” he said.

Vanessa Caceres is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.