LAUSR

Previously, these investigators described which rapidly acting, nonheparin anticoagulants were being used by clinicians in Germany for treating patients with suspected HIT (2). Their previous study evaluated a retrospective multicenter registry of 195 patients identified in 9 hospitals in 7 different German cities (Bad Nauheim, Berlin, Bonn, Coburg, Dresden, Frankfurt, and Munich). The most surprising finding of their earlier study was that the most common anticoagulant used for suspected HIT (w50% of patients) was fondaparinux, despite its “off-label” status for treating HIT. By contrast, anticoagulants approved for treatment of HIT in Germany were used less often: argatroban (29%), lepirudin (5%), and danaparoid (36%) (w18% of patients received more than 1 of these anticoagulants). However, in their earlier report, Schindewolf et al. (2) did not report on thrombotic and bleeding outcomes, leaving those tantalizing data for this new paper.