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Article of the week: RP is safe in patients taking aspirin

Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post.

In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by a prominent member of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment tools at the bottom of each post to join the conversation.

Finally, the third post under the Article of the Week heading on the homepage will consist of additional material or media. This week we feature a video from Mr. Sami-Ramzi Leyh-Bannurah discussing his paper.

If you only have time to read one article this week, it should be this one.

Open and robot-assisted radical retropubic prostatectomy in men receiving ongoing low-dose aspirin medication: revisiting an old paradigm?

Sami-Ramzi Leyh-Bannurah, Jens Hansen, Hendrik Isbarn, Thomas Steuber, Pierre Tennstedt, Uwe Michl, Thorsten Schlomm*, Alexander Haese, Hans Heinzer, Hartwig Huland, Markus Graefen and Lars Budäus

Martini Clinic, Prostate Cancer Center at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, and *Department of Urology, Section for Translational Prostate Cancer Research, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

OBJECTIVE

• To assess blood loss, transfusion rates and 90-day complication rates in patients receiving ongoing 100 mg/day aspirin medication and undergoing open radical prostatectomy (RP) or robot-assisted RP (RARP).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

• Between February 2010 and August 2011, 2061 open RPs and 400 RARPs were performed. All patients received low-molecular-weight heparin for thrombembolism prophylaxis. Aspirin intake during surgery was recorded in 137 patients (5.5%).

• Descriptive statistics and multivariable analyses after propensity-score matching for balancing potential differences in patients with and without aspirin medication were used to assess the risk of blood loss above the median in patients undergoing open RP or RARP.

RESULTS

• The median blood loss in the open RP cohort with and without aspirin medication was 750 and 700 mL, respectively, and in the RARP cohort it was 200 and 150 mL, respectively. Within the same cohorts, transfusions were administered in 21 and 8% and 0 and 1% of patients, respectively.

• The 90-day complication rates in patients with ongoing aspirin medication were 5.8, 4.4, 7.3 and 0% for Clavien grades I, II, III and IV complications, respectively.

• In multivariable analyses and after propensity-score matching, prostate volume (odds ratio 1.03; 95% CI 1.02–1.04; P < 0.01) but not ongoing aspirin medication achieved independent predictor status for the risk of blood loss above the median.

CONCLUSIONS

• Major surgery such as open RP and RARP can be safely performed in patients with ongoing aspirin medication without greater blood loss.

• Higher 90-day complication rates were not detected in such patients.

• Differences in transfusion rates between the groups receiving and not receiving ongoing aspirin medication may be explained by a higher proportion of patients with coronary artery disease in the group receiving ongoing aspirin mediciation. This comorbidity may result in a higher peri-operative threshold for allogenic blood transfusion.

Editorial: Perioperative aspirin: To give or not to give?

As the population ages and life expectancy increases, one may safely assume that more men will be diagnosed with diseases of the elderly such as prostate cancer. In the USA, it is estimated that the number of older adults (≥65 years old) will double between 2010 and 2030, contributing to a 45% increase in cancer incidence [1]. Also, it is likely that these older patients will present with multiple comorbidities, commonly described as ‘multimorbidity’ in the contemporary medical literature, including chronic cardiac and pulmonary conditions requiring multidisciplinary medical management.

Hence, the present study by Leyh-Bannurah et al. [2] examining the peri-operative use of aspirin in patients undergoing radical prostatectomy (RP) is a timely and important contribution, and may very well influence our clinical decision-making regarding the perioperative management of the anti-coagulated patient. Their results show that perioperative continuation of aspirin made no difference in peri and postoperative outcomes following RP. Previous studies have assessed the effect of aspirin continuation in patients undergoing minimally invasive RP, but the present study is the first to evaluate the effect of aspirin continuation in patients undergoing minimally invasive and open RP at a high-volume tertiary centre. Studies from other surgical specialties evaluating the role of anti-platelet therapy and its timing before surgery have shown conflicting results. The study by Park et al. [3], looking at discontinuation of aspirin for ≥7 days vs <7 days before surgery in patients undergoing lumbar spinal fusion, found that aspirin discontinued only 3–7 days before surgery significantly increased the risk of intraoperative bleeding. Alghamdi et al. [4] found similar results in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. In contrast, the study by Wolf et al. [5] showed that continuation of aspirin up to the day of the surgery did not increase the risk of bleeding, transfusion or other adverse outcomes in patients undergoing pancreatectomy. Similarly, Khudairy et al. [6] assessed the use of clopidogrel and its discontinuation time in hip fracture repair, and found that whether it was stopped ≥1 week or <1 week before surgery did not make any difference to the risk of bleeding or peri-operative complications. Nonetheless, the evidence provided by the present study by Leyh-Bannurah et al. is important, as the risk of bleeding seems to be procedure-specific, depending on the nature and source of potential bleeding (primarily arterial vs primarily venous). The lack of information, however, regarding cardiovascular morbidities in their patient population is an important limitation of their study; as such factors may influence perioperative decision-making, including the threshold for transfusion.

Akshay Sood and Quoc-Dien Trinh*
VUI Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics and Evaluation, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI, and *Division of Urologic Surgery and Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

References

  1. Lamb A. Fast Facts: prostate cancer, seventh edition. BJU Int 2012; 110: E157
  2. Park JH, Ahn Y, Choi BS et al. Antithrombotic effects of aspirin on 1- or 2-level lumbar spinal fusion surgery: a comparison between 2 groups discontinuing aspirin use before and after 7 days prior to surgery. Spine 2013; 38: 1561–1565
  3. Alghamdi AA, Moussa F, Fremes SE. Does the use of preoperative aspirin increase the risk of bleeding in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting surgery? Systematic review and meta-analysis. J Cardiac Surg 2007; 22: 247–256
  4. Wolf AM, Pucci MJ, Gabale SD et al. Safety of perioperative aspirin therapy in pancreatic operations. Surgery 2014; 155: 39–46
  5. Al Khudairy A, Al-Hadeedi O, Sayana MK, Galvin R, Quinlan JF. Withholding clopidogrel for 3 to 6 versus 7 days or more before surgery in hip fracture patients. J Orthop Surg 2013; 21: 146–150

Video: Effect of peri-operative aspirin medication in open or robot-assisted RP

Open and robot-assisted radical retropubic prostatectomy in men receiving ongoing low-dose aspirin medication: revisiting an old paradigm?

Sami-Ramzi Leyh-Bannurah, Jens Hansen, Hendrik Isbarn, Thomas Steuber, Pierre Tennstedt, Uwe Michl, Thorsten Schlomm*, Alexander Haese, Hans Heinzer, Hartwig Huland, Markus Graefen and Lars Budäus

Martini Clinic, Prostate Cancer Center at University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, and *Department of Urology, Section for Translational Prostate Cancer Research, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

OBJECTIVE

• To assess blood loss, transfusion rates and 90-day complication rates in patients receiving ongoing 100 mg/day aspirin medication and undergoing open radical prostatectomy (RP) or robot-assisted RP (RARP).

PATIENTS AND METHODS

• Between February 2010 and August 2011, 2061 open RPs and 400 RARPs were performed. All patients received low-molecular-weight heparin for thrombembolism prophylaxis. Aspirin intake during surgery was recorded in 137 patients (5.5%).

• Descriptive statistics and multivariable analyses after propensity-score matching for balancing potential differences in patients with and without aspirin medication were used to assess the risk of blood loss above the median in patients undergoing open RP or RARP.

RESULTS

• The median blood loss in the open RP cohort with and without aspirin medication was 750 and 700 mL, respectively, and in the RARP cohort it was 200 and 150 mL, respectively. Within the same cohorts, transfusions were administered in 21 and 8% and 0 and 1% of patients, respectively.

• The 90-day complication rates in patients with ongoing aspirin medication were 5.8, 4.4, 7.3 and 0% for Clavien grades I, II, III and IV complications, respectively.

• In multivariable analyses and after propensity-score matching, prostate volume (odds ratio 1.03; 95% CI 1.02–1.04; P < 0.01) but not ongoing aspirin medication achieved independent predictor status for the risk of blood loss above the median.

CONCLUSIONS

• Major surgery such as open RP and RARP can be safely performed in patients with ongoing aspirin medication without greater blood loss.

• Higher 90-day complication rates were not detected in such patients.

• Differences in transfusion rates between the groups receiving and not receiving ongoing aspirin medication may be explained by a higher proportion of patients with coronary artery disease in the group receiving ongoing aspirin mediciation. This comorbidity may result in a higher peri-operative threshold for allogenic blood transfusion.

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