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Some clinicians may believe that inpatient venous thromboembolism (VTE) is far more common than outpatient VTE and that outpatient VTE generally occurs in the absence of recent surgery or hospitalization. These beliefs were challenged in an observational study, in which researchers identified all VTE cases in a mid-sized U.S. city during 3 years.
Of 1897 patients, 74% developed VTE in the outpatient setting. Sixty percent of outpatient cases had undergone surgery or had been hospitalized in the preceding 3 months (usually in the preceding 1 month), and 30% of outpatient cases had no history of recent hospitalization, surgery, infection, malignancy, or VTE. Among individuals with a recent hospitalization, 40% did not receive VTE prophylaxis, …