Difficulties encountered by patients under antiplatelet/anticoagulants compared with patients without any co-morbidities [asa i] reporting for dental extraction and other minor oral surgical procedures

Background: A lot of patients report to OMFS OPD for dental extraction and other minor surgical procedures with co-morbidities, of which patients under anti-thrombotic drugs form a major number. Even though post-operative bleeding and the blood parameters leading to it had been investigated, there is a lacuna in the literature regarding the difficulties faced by these patients for getting their treatment done. Method: A cross sectional comparative study was conducted between two groups who reported for minor oral surgical procedures comparing number of visits, number of days of hospital stay, number of bystanders, between patients under antithrombotic medication (250 patients) with ASA I patients (250 patients). Results: Our study showed that patients under anti-thrombotic drugs required anything from 3 to 9 visits while ASA I patients only needed only a single visit. 19 patients required hospitalisation for heparinisation and required 3-5 days of hospital stay. Number bystanders for patients under anti-thrombotic drugs ranged from 2-3 which added to the number visits lead to 6-27 days of loss of manpower days. Conclusion: Number of visits and number of bystanders needed to get a minor oral surgical procedure done by a patient on antithrombotic medication puts him/her in difficulties and causes loss of manpower days. Which in a country like India is a matter of concern. Hence a definite protocol for the management of these patients is required to ease the difficulty and burden.