Anticoagulant Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation in Real Practice: Problems and Prospects

In the review of the current literature urgent issues of treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation are analyzed, namely prevention of thrombosis and the use of anticoagulants therapy. The article describes the current possibilities of prevention thromboembolic complications in patients with atrial fibrillation at high risk. The fact of insufficient use of preventive antithrombotic therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation with high thrombotic risk is demonstrated, which is associated both with incomplete adherence of doctors to the implementation of clinical recommendations, and with low adherence of patients to receiving prescribed anticoagulants. The review of the literature discusses the difficulties of the use of oral anticoagulants, in particular direct action and their high financial burden, and anticoagulants indirect action and instability of their pharmacological effect. The article demonstrates the difficulties of warfarin therapy, such as insufficient adherence to treatment, genetic characteristics of the patient, alimentary and drug interactions. When discussing the issue of insufficient adherence, it is shown that the data on adherence to drug therapy are not homogeneous and do not fully take into account the influence of patient-dependent characteristics. The prospects of developing an individualized algorithm for choosing an anticoagulant for long-term administration for patients with atrial fibrillation from the position of a patient-oriented approach are separately discussed.