Abstract

Heparin, heparin-derived compounds and warfarin have been successfully used for the prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism during last 50 years. Low-molecular-weight heparins are alternative drugs to unfractionated heparin because of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic features nowadays. Warfarin is still a gold standard anticoagulant oral agent. However, there are some limitations of these mentioned drugs. It is needed the new oral and parenteral anticoagulant drugs to solve these limitations. There are several preclinical and clinical studies on efficacy and safety of new drugs such as parenteral FXa inhibitors (idraparinux and idraparinux-biotin complex) and oral FXa inhibitor (rivaroxaban-Xiralto) and oral FIIa inhibitor (dabigatran-Pradaxa). Both rivaroxaban and dabigatran are newly approved for short term usage on the prevention of VTE during orthopedic procedures such as hip and knee replacement.