Background: Sepsis is a syndrome of severe systemic inflammatory response. When combined with disseminated intravascular coagulation, mortality is increased. The need for anticoagulant therapy is still the focus of debate.
Methods: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science were searched. Adult patients with sepsis-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation were included in this study. All-cause mortality as efficacy and serious bleeding complications as adverse effect were measured as primary outcomes. Methodological quality of included studies were assessed using the Methodological Index for Non-randomized Studies (MINORS). Meta-analysis was performed using R software (version 3.5.1) and Review Manager (version 5.3.5).
Results: There were nine eligible studies with 17,968 patients included. There were no significant reductions in mortality between the anticoagulant group and the non-anticoagulant group (RR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.72-1.10; P = 0.27). The DIC resolution rate in the anticoagulation group has a statistically significant increase compared with the control group [OR: 2.62, 95% CI (1.54-4.45), P < 0.05]. And there was no significant difference in bleeding complications between the two groups (RR, 1.27; 95% CI, 0.77-2.09; P = 0.69). SOFA score reduction did not change significantly between the two groups (P = 0.13).
Conclusions: Our study observed no significant benefit of anticoagulant therapy on mortality of sepsis-induced DIC. Anticoagulation therapy can promote DIC resolution in sepsis-induced DIC. In addition, anticoagulant therapy does not increase the risk of bleeding in these patients.
Keywords: anticoagulant; mortality; sepsis-induced disseminated intravascular coagulation.