Preventable Hospital Admission-associated VTE: Thoughts on Thromboprophylaxis as Asians

Previous studies surveying senior and junior doctors have shown that thromboprophylaxis was not commonly practiced in hospitalized medical patients in three public hospitals in Singapore. We, therefore, conducted an audit of our hospital's venous thromboembolism (VTE) clinic cases to study the proportion of preventable hospital admission-associated VTE (HAAVTE). All newly diagnosed VTE cases referred to our VTE clinic from March 2023 to December 2023 were reviewed, to identify those potentially associated with recent hospital admissions. We then reviewed the medical records of those cases to see if thromboprophylaxis was prescribed if indicated. HAAVTEs that had high VTE risk and did not receive appropriate thromboprophylaxis (pharmacological or mechanical) were considered preventable HAAVTE. Thirteen cases of HAAVTEs were identified, out of which only one was given the appropriate thromboprophylaxis. The proportion of preventable HAAVTE was 92.3%. Thromboprophylaxis is not widely practiced in our hospital. More effort is required to improve local thromboprophylaxis practice for hospitalized patients to reduce the burden of preventable HAAVTE.