In reply
We would like to thank both respondents for their interest in our article1 and for their valuable remarks. We fully agree that despite the long follow-up period of the study, our data lack statistical power to support final recommendations. We therefore refrained from overly firm conclusions. Still, we believe that based on our findings further investigations are warranted.
With McLeod and Gersh, we believe that, in general, myocardial infarction is not merely an embolic event, but it is thrombotic, and hence “thromboembolic.” Clot formation plays an important role in myocardial infarction, even in severe atherosclerosis. Although not widely used, vitamin K antagonists are effective in preventing myocardial infarction and may well be superior to antiplatelet agents.2 Therefore, we included myocardial infarction as a thromboembolic end point.