Long Term Treatment with Anticoagulants in Coronary Artery Disease

Summary

347 patients with angina pectoris and 222 patients who had survived an attack of myocardial infarction for at least 8 weeks have been under long-term treatment with dicumarol or phenylindanedione. The annual mortality-rate was reduced to 5% in both groups. Patients with angina pectoris show improvement in 47.7% of the cases, if the disease is not older than 1 year before the start of treatment. Improvement was found in only 25% of the cases when the disease was older than 4 years. It was clearly evidenced that anticoagulant treatment of angina pectoris is only useful when the disease is not older than 2 to 3 years before starting treatment.