Laboratory monitoring of the anticoagulant drugs

Anticoagulant drugs could be divided into oral anticoagulants and parenteral anticoagulants, the oral anticoagulants include the vitamin K antagonists and non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants; the parenteral anticoagulants include heparin drugs, bivalirudin and agartroban. Laboratory monitoring could help to improve the effectiveness and safety of anticoagulant therapy, but three questions need to be clarified: Which patients need to be monitored? Which experiments could be used for monitoring? How to understand monitoring data? Key words: Anticoagulants; Thrombosis; Hemorrhage; Drug monitoring