Outpatient venous thromboembolism: the importance of optimum prophylaxis
Samuel Z Goldhaber
Correspondence Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Email sgoldhaber@partners.org
This article has no abstract so we have provided the first paragraph of the full text.
Spencer and colleagues have published an observational study that changes the way we think about VTE. The authors began by confirming reported cases of VTE, including both DVT and PE, occurring in the metropolitan area of Worcester, MA, USA during three 12-month periods. Worcester is the second largest city, after Boston, in the six-state region known as New England. The first finding of this study is that three-quarters of all patients with VTE present to community physicians outside the hospital setting. This result highlights the importance of constant vigilance for VTE by clinicians who practice primary-care, outpatient medicine. Spencer et al. also found that many outpatients presenting with VTE had been hospitalized (36.8%) or had undergone outpatient surgery (5.2%) within the previous 3 months. Two-thirds of these patients experienced VTE within 1 month of hospitalization or outpatient surgery.
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