Minor oral surgery under anticoagulant therapy: A review of the literature

Objectives: This literature review seeks to know the management, as well as the limitations, indications, hemostatic measures and the risk to which compromised patients are exposed either by modifying the treatment or decreasing the dose prior to surgery treatment, as well as to establish the management of patients under therapy; before, during and after surgery.

Materials and methods: a literature review was carried out during the period September - December 2022. The sources used were the PudMed, ScienceDirect and Medline databases.  The search terms were: (Warfarin) AND (Oral surgery), (Anticoagultion bridge ) AND (Anticoagulant) AND (Dental extraction) AND (dentistry). Results: a total of 6281 articles were identified from the three databases used: pubmed, sciencedirect and medline. After applying the exclusion criteria, 3557 articles were eliminated, leaving a total of 2724 for reading and eligibility, resulting in 56 articles, 11 duplicate articles were excluded, leaving 45 articles for analysis and elaboration of the literature. Conclusions: compromised patients under treatment with direct oral anticoagulants (DOAC) or vitamin K antagonists (VKA) present a risk of intraoperative and postoperative bleeding, where VKA presents a higher risk compared to DOAC; it is recommended not to suspend the administration of anticoagulants either before or after surgery. Hemostasis can be controlled using different hemostatic measures.