Oral anticoagulation is indicated for a number of conditions, including prevention of systemic embolism in patients with mechanical heart valves, valvular heart disease, myocardial infarction and atrial fibrillation. VKA are frequently prescribed as long term treatment. Due to the features of treatment, VKA have the potential to cause dissatisfaction and reduce QoL. OBJECTIVES To assess Health- Related Quality of life (HRQOL) in patients receiving VKA comparing their health status with matched controls. METHODS. Ninety-two consecutive patients receiving VKA (53 male; age range 37-81 years) were enrolled among those followed by our anticoagulation clinic. The more frequent indications for VKA treatment were atrial fibrillation and venous thromboembolism. Each patient was matched by age and sex with one control from a database of a population based naturalistic prospective survey. The EuroQoL, completed during the enrolment visit, was used to evaluate HRQOL. To evaluate differences in the five dimensions between the two groups was used Chi Square Test. To evaluate differences in EQ VAS was used both Paired sample T test and a regression analysis using bootstrap estimated of standard error. RESULTS No statistically significant differences were reported in all dimensions between the two groups: mobility (P=1.000) , self care (P=0.064), usual activities (P=0.213), pain/discomfort (P=0.213) and anxiety/depression (P=0.512). The figures obtained using VAS to assess the global health status were: 72.8 (SD,±19.7) in patients treated with VKA and 73.9 (SD,±16.0) in matched controls; this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.708 Paired sample T); also bootstrap confident intervals indicated that there was no statistically significant differences between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Even if it is conceivable that different settings would give different results, our study show that in patients on oral anticoagulant treatment the overall perception of health status was not significantly different from that of matched controls.