What Everyone Should Know About Blood Clots to Stay Safe – ABC4.com

Salt Lake City, Utah (ABC4 UTAH) Up to 900,000 people in the United States alone are affected by thrombosis or blood clots each year and about 100,000 of those people will die.

Thrombosis is the formation of a blood clot in a blood vessel. The vessel may be any artery or vein. Once formed, the clot can block or slow the normal flow of blood and even break loose and travel to an organ. A blood clot that travels is called an embolism.

Venous thromboembolism or VTE is a condition in which blood clots form most often in the deep veins of the leg. Those are known as deep vein thrombosis or DVT and can travel in the circulation and lodge in the lungs. When that happens, its known as pulmonary embolism, or PE.

VTE is the number one cause of preventable hospital associated deaths which, when taken together, is associated with more deaths annually than AIDS, breast cancer and motor vehicle accidents combined, said Scott Woller, MD, chair of the department of medicine at Intermountain Medical Center and a specialist in thrombosis medicine. Its important to be proactive. If you have a concern, contact your health care professional immediately.

Risk Factors

Diagnosis

Treatment

Intermountain derived a new risk score that predicts which hospitalized patients are at risk for developing blood clots after being discharged to protect them during the highest risk period.

They have also conducted the largest study ever of hospitalized trauma patients to assess whether routine surveillance ultrasound during hospitalization better protects patients from blood clots.

Intermountain investigators advise the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to best identify blood clot risk in patients to protect them from blood clots and how to best identify pulmonary embolism in the emergency department.

Learn more about Intermountain Healthcare and how they can help you by visiting their website.

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What Everyone Should Know About Blood Clots to Stay Safe - ABC4.com