**6.4 The potential of new anticoagulant drugs**

An insufficient quality of oral anticoagulant therapy following the acute thrombotic episode has been found to be associated with an increased risk of the PTS (28,65). Conversely, the long-term use of LMWH has been found to reduce the PTS rate in comparison with vitamin K antagonists (35,109). We cannot exclude, therefore, the potential of a few emerging antithrombotic compounds (such as dabigatran etexilate and rivaroxaban), which can be administered orally in fixed daily dosage and have been found to be at least as effective and safe as conventional anticoagulation for the initial and long-term treatment of DVT (110,111), for further reducing the incidence and the severity of the PTS.
