Acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) is commonly treated with the oral anticoagulants apixaban and rivaroxaban, yet uncertainty remains regarding differences in bleeding risk between the two. To address this, a study evaluated bleeding outcomes in 2,760 patients receiving apixaban compared with rivaroxaban. The study found that primary-outcome events occurred less frequently with apixaban (44/1345; 3.3%) compared to rivaroxaban (96/1355; 7.1%), with a relative risk of 0.46.
Death from any cause was rare in both groups (1/1345 [0.1%] vs 4/1355 [0.3%]; relative risk, 0.25). Serious adverse events unrelated to bleeding or venous thrombosis were similar between the two groups (36/1345 [2.7%] vs 30/1355 [2.2%]). These findings suggest that, among patients with acute venous thromboembolism, apixaban is associated with a significantly lower risk of clinically relevant bleeding compared with…
