Safety of ultrasound-guided botulinum toxin type A injections for patients with anticoagulant and antiplatelet background medication.

Background. TXB-A injections are the first-line treatment of many movement disorders, and the safety of doing them is essential to the effectiveness of therapy. Aims. Evaluation of safety of TXB-A guided injections in upper limb spasticity of post-stroke patients. Methods. The study group comprised 60 patients distributed in 3 subgroups of 20 based on background medication administered in post-stroke management: 20 patients in the antiplatelet background subgroup, 20 patients in the subgroup of anticoagulant background medication, and 20 without anticoagulant/antiplatelet background medication. From the 60 patient group, based on the number of TXB-A injection cycles, 3 other subgroups were produced: 20 patients performed 3 injection cycles, 20 performed 2 cycles, and 20 completed a single injection cycle. Every patient received a total dose of 1000 UI of TXB-A. After each set of local injections, ultrasounds were performed at the injection site searching for local hematomas. The moments evaluated were: T0 (the initial time - injection time), T1 (one month after the injection), T2 (3 months from T0 or 2 months from T1), T3 (1 month after T2), T4 (3 months after T2 or 2 months after T3) and T5 (1 month after T4). Results. The lowest p value of the 3 possible comparisons of the anticoagulant, antiplatelet, no anticoagulant/antiplatelet group of patients was 0.856, showing a purely random distribution of adverse effects manifested by local hematomas following ultrasound guided injections. Conclusions. Multiple cycles of US guided TXB-A injections with a minimum 3-month frequency between injections do not increase the risk of local haematomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]