Oral antithrombotic (AT) drugs are widely implicated in serious and preventable bleeding events, which justifies the implementation of risk minimization actions. Avoiding inappropriate oral AT combinations is a major concern, particularly for patients with multiple chronic conditions. The first step is to provide fast and easy access to the latest recommendations. From a systematic review of international guidelines (2012-2018), a prescription support-tool synthesizing national and international guidelines on chronic management (≥ 1 month) of oral AT agents without considering in-hospital management and bridging therapy will be developed. Our main objective in this study is to evaluate the accuracy of this tool by measuring the appropriateness of oral AT prescriptions according to the most recent guidelines.
Methods and analysis: In this web-based randomized controlled trial, participating French general practitioners and cardiologists in the outpatient setting will be randomized by use or not of the prescription support-tool. They will be asked to provide the number of drugs, drug class, duration and dosage of ATs, within a time window of 10 minutes, for 3 different clinical situations presented as clinical vignettes (multiple-choice questions). The scientific committee has created and validated 30 clinical vignettes illustrating outpatient clinical situations for which the use of oral ATs (single, dual or triple therapy) is recommended or not according to the guidelines. All data will be treated anonymously.
Ethics and dissemination: If the prescription support-tool is associated with more appropriate prescription of AT combinations, its dissemination to further evaluate outcome data including haemorrhage, ischemic events, and death will be considered.
