JOURNAL ARTICLE
REVIEW
Add like
Add dislike
Add to saved papers

Venous thromboembolism in the elderly: A narrative review.

Persons aged ≥65years not only account for over 60% of venous thromboembolism (VTE) events, they have also a higher mortality and VTE-related morbidity than younger patients, including anticoagulation-related bleeding and the postthrombotic syndrome. However, only few studies have focused specifically on VTE in older persons and practice guidelines commonly extrapolate study results from younger healthier patients to the multimorbid elderly. Evidence suggests that the clinical presentation is more subtle in the elderly with VTE and that commonly used diagnostic modalities, including clinical prediction rules, D-dimer tests, and planar ventilation-perfusion scans are less specific and efficient in older persons. Moreover, because preventive and therapeutic anticoagulation trials often exclude elderly multimorbid patients who have an increased risk of bleeding, the optimal prophylactic approach in medical inpatients and the best therapeutic anticoagulation strategy in patients with confirmed VTE are uncertain in such patients. In this narrative review, we summarize the evidence on the risk, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of VTE in older patients. We also propose a research agenda to increase the evidence basis on VTE in older patients to optimize their quality of care. Given the fact that the incidence of elderly persons with VTE is likely to rise, future VTE research should attempt to enroll elderly multimorbid patients into pragmatic clinical trials and to increasingly incorporate patient-centered universal outcomes, such as health-related quality of life, functional status, symptom burden, and active life expectancy.

Full text links

We have located links that may give you full text access.
Can't access the paper?
Try logging in through your university/institutional subscription. For a smoother one-click institutional access experience, please use our mobile app.

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app

Mobile app image

Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app

All material on this website is protected by copyright, Copyright © 1994-2024 by WebMD LLC.
This website also contains material copyrighted by 3rd parties.

By using this service, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.

Your Privacy Choices Toggle icon

You can now claim free CME credits for this literature searchClaim now

Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university

For the best experience, use the Read mobile app