2020/05/07 by Peter K. Henke, Susan R. Kahn, Christopher J. Pannucci +5 · 2 citations
Medicine · Nursing · #Venous Thromboembolism Diagnosis and Management #Diagnosis and Treatment of Venous Diseases #Peripheral Artery Disease Management #Medicine #Venous thromboembolism #Risk assessment #Intensive care medicine #Public health #Risk stratification #Medical emergency #Emergency medicine #Thrombosis #Surgery #Internal medicine #Nursing
paper · doi:10.1161/cir.0000000000000769
openalex publication_date 2020/05/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a major preventable disease that affects hospitalized inpatients. Risk stratification and prophylactic measures have good evidence supporting their use, but multiple reasons exist that prevent full adoption, compliance, and efficacy that may underlie the persistence of VTE over the past several decades. This policy statement provides a focused review of VTE, risk scoring systems, prophylaxis, and tracking methods. From this summary, 5 major areas of policy guidance are presented that the American Heart Association believes will lead to better implementation, tracking, and prevention of VTE events. They include performing VTE risk assessment and reporting the level of VTE risk in all hospitalized patients, integrating preventable VTE as a benchmark for hospital comparison and pay-for-performance programs, supporting appropriations to improve public awareness of VTE, tracking VTE nationwide with the use of standardized definitions, and developing a centralized data steward for data tracking on VTE risk assessment, prophylaxis, and rates.