Does Previous Anti-thrombotic Use Affect the Course of Coronavirus Disease-2019?

Introduction: Proinflammatory cytokines, produced as an immune response in severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus 2 infection, activate the coagulation cascade as well. In this study, we investigated the difference in the clinical course of patients who had been already using anti-thrombotic therapy before coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) for any reason compared to the group who had not. Methods: In this retrospective, multicenter study; patients who were hospitalized between March 11 and July 1, 2020 were divided into two main groups as who had been on anti-thrombotic therapy for any indication use previously at the time of admission or who had not been on anti-thrombotic therapy at the time of admission, and their selected clinical parameters were compared. Results: After analyzing the study population of 124 patients with a homogeneous distribution in terms of age and gender, the comparison of anti-thrombotic users and non-users showed no significant difference in hospitalization. There was a statistically significant decrease in mechanical ventilation apply rate, intensive care unit duration and mortality rate between the group using anti-thrombotic compared to the group not using it (p<0.05). Conclusion: It has already been shown that COVID-19 patients are more prone to thromboembolic events as it activates the coagulation cascade with the cytokine storm it creates and thus the mortality of COVID-19 infection increases significantly. Parallel to this fact the results of our study demonstrated that using anti-thrombotic therapy for any reason may affect the bad prognosis of the disease positively.