Development of a Pharmacologic Venous Thromboembolism Protocol for Trauma Patients

Despite significant advances in the prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE), deep venous thromboembolism (DVT) and pulmonary (PE) remains the most common preventable cause of hospital death to date, accounting for approximately 150,000 to 200,000 deaths per year in the U.S. Surgical trauma patients remain a challenging group of patients who are at high risk of developing VTE. VTE prophylaxis guidelines for trauma patients can be found in the 2016 CHEST guidelines, 2002 EAST Trauma guidelines, and the 2016 VTE prophylaxis in neurocritical care patients Neurocritical Care Society guidelines. In spite of the availability of these guidelines, the well-established risk factors and the availability of safe and effective prophylactic agents, numerous audits have demonstrated that appropriate thromboembolism prophylaxis is not being offered to large numbers of trauma surgical patients. In this article, a brief review of literature and the various society guidelines were completed. The goal of this paper is to develop a protocol for VTE prophylaxis in the trauma patient population to provide optimal care for patients.