Prophylactic low dose heparin anticoagulant therapy in patients with spinal cord injuries: a retrospective study

A retrospective study was performed of 100 consecutive acute traumatic spinal injury patients with neurological deficit admitted to the Yorkshire regional spinal injuries centre prior to May 1990. Ninety-seven of these patients received prophylactic low dose subcutaneous heparin and 3 patients were excluded because of noted complications. Twenty-six patients developed thromboembolic complications. Apart from the fact that acute spinal cord injury patients are considered to be in an hypercoaguable state, the occurrence of deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism (DVT/PE) in our study, even though these patients were on prophylactic low dose subcutaneous heparin, was related to delay in transfers, operative intervention, level of spinal cord injury and was possibly due to loss of some amount of heparin solution from the prefilled syringe during removal of air bubbles prior to the subcutaneous heparin injection.