Introduction

Given the amount and complexity of information surrounding the target specific oral anticoagulants, a lengthy didactic educational format has the potential to be overwhelming to the reader and difficult to translate and apply to direct patient care.

Educational Approach

The proposed book will educate clinicians utilizing a series of clinical cases to simultaneously develop the readers’ knowledge base, problem-solving skills, and practically apply their new knowledge to a variety of clinical situations.

These will be short focused case presentations that provide critical information and pose questions to the reader at key points in the decision making process.

The cases will be relevant to what clinicians will encounter not only on a daily basis, but also reflective of scenarios that clinicians will not encounter regularly, but that they will have to act upon (e.g. a bleeding patient, patient scheduled for elective or emergent procedure, patient with changing renal function, patient on drugs that have plausible yet unstudied drug interaction with a target specific oral anticoagulant etc).

Case Studies and Discussions

Included in the case studies will be evidence-based discussions (with appropriate references) that provide immediate feedback on the different treatment alternatives that were offered.

The case studies will be designed to instruct the reader how to select and effectively utilize the most appropriate agent for a given clinical scenario.

They will focus on key features of the target specific oral anticoagulants, what they have in common, how they are unique from each other, as well as illustrating the clinical decision process one should take when selecting an agent or managing a patient already receiving one of the target specific oral agents.