Outcomes of Chronically Anticoagulated Patients Undergoing Split-Thickness Skin Grafting for Diabetic Foot Ulcers.

The study used coded records from a database, so outcomes depend on how hospitals entered diagnoses and procedures. Graft failure coding is not specifically defined and may vary between organizations. The researchers could not tell whether anticoagulants were temporarily held during the grafting procedure. The duration of anticoagulant therapy was not known, so it was not matched or controlled. Aspirin was not used to include or exclude patients, so some patients in both groups may have been taking it. The lower first-month infection rate was not the primary outcome and the paper does not explain why it occurred. Because this is an observational record-linkage study, it cannot prove that anticoagulation is safe; it only reports associations.

The authors report no disclosures relevant to the manuscript.

Do not conclude that anticoagulants improve wound healing or can be continued without individual bleeding assessment. The lower infection rate was a secondary observation without a known mechanism, and the study did not test whether anticoagulants were held during surgery.