SAVES-IBD: Safety & Efficacy of Aspirin vs. Standard of Care for VTE Prophylaxis After IBD Surgery

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease who undergo abdominopelvic intestinal surgery are at increased risk for developing venous thromboembolism, in the form of deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and mesenteric vein thrombosis for 90-days after surgery. Despite being high-risk, the standard of care is to provide mechanical and chemoprophylaxis (unfractionated heparin or low molecular weight heparin) only while they are hospitalized. There exists randomized data, in patients who have had surgery for abdominopelvic cancer, confirming the efficacy of extended post-discharge chemoprophylaxis with either unfractionated heparin or low molecular weight heparin for 28 days after surgery, but no such data exists for IBD. There has been a resistance to adopting this for IBD patients due to compliance and cost of the daily injections. However, recently, a large, multicenter, randomized trial in >3000 patients who underwent total hip or total knee replacement found that extended aspirin (81 mg) twice daily post-discharge was both equivalent and non-inferior to prophylaxis using full-strength anticoagulation with a factor Xa inhibitor. This is a prospective, multicenter, open label clinical trial to assess the safety and efficacy of post-operative venous thromboembolism (VTE) prophylaxis with aspirin 81 mg orally twice daily for 30-days after surgery for IBD compared with controls receiving standard of care.