Dental Management and Bleeding Complications of Patients on Long-Term Oral Antiplatelet Therapy. Review of Existing Studies and Guidelines.

Antiplatelet drugs are currently widely used in primary and especially secondary prevention of cardiovascular events.Dental management of patients on antiplatelet therapy is still not clearly defined: the discontinuation of antiplatelet therapy increases the risk of thrombotic complications, whereas uninterrupted antiplatelet therapy is assumed to increase the bleeding complications after dental surgical procedures.The aim of this article is to review the main antiplatelet drugs used for long-term oral antiplatelet therapy, the laboratory methods for evaluating effectiveness of this therapy, to identify the studies and guidelines available for dental management of patients on antiplatelet drugs and to summarize their conclusions and recommendations.The methodology used through the research for the literature review includes the following sources: Medscape, Pubmed-Medline database, Science Direct, and EBSCO host, the data base of Medical University Plovdiv and specialised published books in general medicine and dentistry.