Loading...
Historically, upper-extremity deep venous thrombosis (DVT) has been thought of as rare and benign. Utilizing a multinational registry of consecutive patients with objectively confirmed acute DVT or pulmonary embolism (PE), researchers assessed the clinical outcomes of patients who presented with upper extremity DVT.
Of the 11,000 patients enrolled in the registry, 512 (4.4%) had upper-extremity DVT, and virtually all received anticoagulants. Patients with upper-extremity DVT were more likely to have cancer (38% vs. 20%) and less likely to present with an overt PE (9% vs. 29%) than were those with lower-extremity DVT; 45% of upper-extremity DVT patients had catheter-related DVT. At 3 months, the incidence of major bleeding, recurrent DVT, or …