For the primary safety outcome, the benefit favored placebo but the interaction was not statistically significant for any of the four subgroups.
A post hoc subgroup analysis also showed similar results across the major categories of surgery, including general, vascular, urologic, and gynecologic, Dr. Devereaux told this news organization.
Although TXA is commonly used in orthopedic procedures, Dr. Devereaux noted, in other types of surgeries, “it’s not used at all.” But because TXA “is so cheap, and we can apply it to a broad population, even at an economic level it looks like it’s a winner to give to almost all patients having noncardiac surgery.”
The team also recently published a risk prediction tool that can help estimate a patient’s baseline risk for bleeding.
“So just using a model, which will bring together the patient’s type of surgery and their risk factors, you can look to see, okay, this is enough risk of bleeding, I’m just going to give tranexamic acid,” he said. “We will also be doing economic analyses because blood is also not cheap.”
The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), and the Research Grant Council (Hong Kong). Dr. Devereaux reports research/research grants from Abbott Diagnostics, Philips Healthcare, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens. Dr. Mack reports receiving research grants from Abbott Vascular, Edwards Lifesciences, and Medtronic.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.