Is the ORBIT bleeding risk score superior to the HAS-BLED score in anticoagulated atrial fibrillation patients?

Abstract

Background: Several bleeding risk scores have been validated in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The ORBIT score has been recently proposed as a simple score with the best ability to predict major bleeding. The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that the00020ORBIT score was superior to the HAS-BLED score for predicting major bleeding and death in “real world” anticoagulated AF patients. Methods and Results: We analyzed the predictive performance for bleeding and death of 406 AF patients who underwent 571 electrical cardioversion procedures and 1,276 patients with permanent/persistent AF from the FANTASIIA registry. In the cardioversion population, 21 patients had major bleeding events and 26 patients died. The predictive performance for major bleeding of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different (c-statistics 0.77 (95% CI 0.66–0.88) and 0.82 (95% CI 0.77–0.93), respectively; P=0.080). For the FANTASIIA population, 46 patients had major bleeding events and 50 patients died. The predictive performances for major bleeding of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different (c-statistics 0.63 (95% CI 0.56–0.71) and 0.70 (95% CI 0.62–0.77), respectively; P=0.116). For death, the predictive performances of HAS-BLED and ORBIT were not significantly different in both populations. The ORBIT score categorized most patients as “low risk”. Conclusions: Despite the original claims in its derivation paper, the ORBIT score was not superior to HAS-BLED for predicting major bleeding and death in a “real world” oral anticoagulated AF population.