Coumadin Clinic

Anticoagulation Clinic

At the Coumadin Clinic at Aurora BayCare, we help you monitor and manage your medications to prevent blood clots. Coumadin® is the brand name for warfarin, a blood thinning medication.

Blood clots can be serious. They can cause life-threatening situations, disease, heart attack, or stroke. We use an array of drugs to prevent and treat clots, such as the commonly prescribed blood-thinning drug warfarin (Coumadin).

These drugs are referred to as “anticoagulation therapy” because they help prevent your blood from clotting (or coagulating).

Success with this treatment depends upon correct dosing decisions, close attention to detail, and good communication.

When you visit the Coumadin Clinic, you will see a registered nurse who will sample your blood and monitor you for any drug or diet interactions or side effects. The registered nurse will adjust your Coumadin dose, if needed.

Your primary care physician or specialty provider will refer you to the Coumadin Clinic.

Coumadin Management

To be effective and safe, your warfarin intake should be closely monitored. Warfarin interacts with many commonly used medications, and some foods, particularly those containing large amounts of vitamin K. While you are on warfarin, your blood clotting time (also referred to as INR or internalized normalized ratio) should be monitored at least monthly.

You will need more frequent monitoring when you first begin taking warfarin, if your other medications change, or if your INR results fall outside the appropriate range.

INR results that are too high indicate a higher risk of bleeding. INR results too low are not sufficient to prevent clots.