Jul;60(1):38-40.
Short-term therapy of 96-hr duration with tranexamic acid was prophylactically effective as defined by the absence of attacks of angioedema in 14 patients with hereditary angioedema undergoing 10 dental and 4 general surgical procedures. Eight of the 14 patients had previously undergone dental extractions without prophylactic therapy with antifibrinolytic agents and each had experienced one or more attacks of angioedema. Seven of these 8 patients had a cumulative experience of 13 episodes of laryngeal edema after dental extractions and the eighth had a bout of cutaneous angioedema. Although the number of dental extractions conducted without prophylactic antifibrinolytic therapy cannot be accurately defined in retrospect, the prominence of laryngeal edema in this circumstance is striking when compared with the absence of attacks in the presence of prophylaxis with tranexamic acid. Methyltestosterone and impeded androgens are now known to be effective prophylaxis for spontaneous and, presumably, postoperative attacks when employed chronically because their administration is associated with correction of the biochemical defect of hereditary angioneurotic edema, but their chronic administration to children and women of childbearing age requires further definition because of their potential pituitary suppressive action. Tranexamic acid prophylaxis makes it possible to offer to untreated patients with hereditary angioneurotic edema dental work and other operative procedures that in the past were withheld or conducted with considerable risk.
Available online at: www.jacionline.org/article/0091-6749(77)90080-X/