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Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Point-Of-Care Ultrasound Screening for Proximal Lower Extremity Deep Venous Thrombosis
Published on: February 10, 2023
Rates of symptomatic venous thromboembolism in US surgical patients: a retrospective administrative database study
Alex C Spyropoulos1, Mohammed Hussein, Jay Lin
1University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM, USA. aspyropoulos2787@msn.com
Abstract:
US national performance measures may reduce the burden of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in surgical patients. To characterize the VTE rate in US surgical patients, and identify real-world independent VTE risk-factors, a national managed-care database was analyzed. 172,320 eligible surgical discharges (23.9% orthopedic, 76.1% abdominal surgery) from the PharMetrics database (January 2001-December 2005) were evaluated. The rate of thromboprophylaxis was low in orthopedic (40.5%) and abdominal (1.8%) surgery discharges, with the event rates of symptomatic VTE in these groups being 4.7% and 3.1%, respectively. The median time to VTE was 51 days: the majority of VTE events occurred post-discharge. Independent predictors of VTE included prior VTE (odds ratio [OR] 10.2; 95% CI: 9.2-11.4), and orthopedic versus abdominal surgery (OR 1.4; 95% CI: 1.4-1.6). Patients undergoing orthopedic or abdominal surgery remain at-risk for VTE. Implementation of national performance measures may help reduce the burden of VTE.
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