Thromboprophylaxis in an academic medical center.

INTRODUCTION: Questions regarding which patients require prophylaxis for thromboembolism, what methods should be used and the appropriate duration of treatment remain unanswered.

METHODS AND MATERIALS: A retrospective review from a single academic medical center was undertaken to evaluate prophylactic strategies. Multiple sources of data were used to identify patients who were prophylaxed and those who developed deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism. These data were analyzed to determine factors associated with successful prophylaxis including age, type of prophylaxis and admitting services.

RESULTS: A total of 22,030 patients were admitted of whom 7520 (36%) received prophylaxis and there were 523 thromboembolic events. Pneumatic compression devices and antiembolic stockings had the lowest incidence of failure, 2.2% and 3.2% respectively. There were significant differences in the rates of prophylaxis used by the five admitting services, being highest in surgery (40.8%) and lowest in gynecology (11.4%). However, these groups had the lowest incidence of venous thromboembolism (4.3%, 2.3%). Both of these groups used pneumatic compression as the method of choice (64.3% and 65.2%).

CONCLUSIONS: Thromboembolism prophylaxis reduces the incidence of DVT and PE, however, our study demonstrates the variable effectiveness of each method in different types of patients. Our data suggest that patient risk of DVT should be individually assessed and an appropriate method of prophylaxis should be applied when warranted.