What's Hot in Clots, February 2026

Hope that you’ve had a great 2026 so far! Here we go with the summaries of the month:

Ticagrelor and cardiac surgery, again??

In my last blog, I covered a study about ticagrelor-based (dual antiplatelet) therapy after CABG. We are not going to duplicate that—but I ran into a very cool study. This time, some authors tried to use a drug-removing device to reduce bleeding in patients who went to surgery within 2 days of ticagrelor discontinuation. They used a win ratio for primary analyses. Guess what? It wasn’t a resounding win. But still, I find the results interesting. Read more.

Age-adjusted D-dimer to rule out DVT

Age-adjusted cut-offs have been in use for PE for some time. Now, some investigators wondered whether this could be extended to DVT? Guess what? Yes! Read more here and the accompanying editorial.  Bonus question: How about in superficial vein thrombosis? Bottom line: Don’t use it!

Efficient identification of PE in electronic health record data with natural language processing

With wider availability of electronic health record (EHR) data, we also need efficient tools to identify PE, rather than manual review of records one by one. The traditional way is using claims data. (We recently validated a few approaches here and here.) In a more recent study, we externally validated two natural language processing (NLP) tools for this purpose (see here). The next step would be to use large language models with sufficient detail and for various outcomes. Stay tuned!

RV-PA uncoupling in patients with STEMI

I had heard about right ventricular-pulmonary artery (RV-PA) uncoupling—essentially a marker of impaired RV reserve—in the setting of PE. Investigators have now externally validated its prognostic effect in STEMI as well. Read more.

Epidemiological statistics on cardiovascular diseases and stroke

The AHA released its new 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics and JACC published its inaugural Cardiovascular Statistics in the United States report. Both documents are quite valuable. The first is more comprehensive, while the latter has a stronger emphasis on visuals and online infographics. I hope for major updates to both in future years, with construct validation for the reported estimates.

Behnood Bikdeli, MD, MS