No Benefit for Idarucizumab

The review article by Lange et al. on the management of anticoagulation in the setting of endoscopic interventions provides helpful advice and pointers for routine clinical practice (1). Their assessment clashes with the available evidence in one single issue: idarucizumab has thus far not been shown to offer any benefit in terms of the safe administration of anticoagulants. Pollack et al. write verbatim: “Among 35 patients in group A who could be assessed, hemostasis, as determined by local investigators, was restored at a median of 11.4 hours” (2).

In the setting of a dosing interval of 12 hours for dabigatran, idarucizumab therefore seems to be clinically ineffective in practice, except for its effectiveness in laboratory tests.