Is the ORBIT Bleeding Risk Score Superior to the HAS-BLED Score in Anticoagulated Atrial Fibrillation Patients?.
Research article published in Circulation journal : official journal of the Japanese Circulation Society (2016)
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Several bleeding risk scores have been validated in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The ORBIT score has been recently proposed as a simple score with the best ability to predict major bleeding. The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that the ORBIT score was superior to the HAS-BLED score for predicting major bleeding and death in "real world" anticoagulated AF patients. METHODS AND RESULTS: We analyzed the predictive performance for bleeding and death of 406 AF patients who underwent 571 electrical cardioversion procedures and 1,276 patients with permanent/persistent AF from the FANTASIIA registry. In the cardioversion population, 21 patients had major bleeding events and 26 patients died. The predictive performance for major bleeding of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different (c-statistics 0.77 (95% CI 0.66-0.88) and 0.82 (95% CI 0.77-0.93), respectively; P=0.080). For the FANTASIIA population, 46 patients had major bleeding events and 50 patients died. The predictive performances for major bleeding of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different (c-statistics 0.63 (95% CI 0.56-0.71) and 0.70 (95% CI 0.62-0.77), respectively; P=0.116). For death, the predictive performances of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different in both populations. The ORBIT score categorized most patients as "low risk". CONCLUSIONS: Despite the original claims in its derivation paper, the ORBIT score was not superior to HAS-BLED for predicting major bleeding and death in a "real world" oral anticoagulated AF population. (Circ J 2016; 80: 2102-2108).
Abstract sourced from PubMed (NCBI) for the cited record. See the original publication for the authoritative version.
Summary
Is the ORBIT Bleeding Risk Score Superior to the HAS-BLED Score in Anticoagulated Atrial Fibrillation Patients?.
Why This Matters for Hirudotherapy
This validation study tested whether the ORBIT bleeding-risk score outperformed HAS-BLED in real-world anticoagulated atrial fibrillation patients across a cardioversion cohort and the FANTASIIA registry, and found no statistically significant difference between the two scores for predicting major bleeding or death. Its relevance to hirudotherapy is indirect and contextual: it belongs to the systemic-anticoagulation and bleeding-risk literature ASH curates to situate the leech secretome story within mainstream antithrombotic practice, but it does not address leech therapy, hirudin, or any leech-derived compound. The appropriate caveat is that this is an observational predictive-modeling study about risk scores in AF patients, with no bearing on the efficacy or safety of medicinal leeching.
Citation
Is the ORBIT Bleeding Risk Score Superior to the HAS-BLED Score in Anticoagulated Atrial Fibrillation Patients?.
Esteve-Pastor et al. · Circulation journal : official journal of the Japanese Circulation Society, 2016
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