Venous blood clot

Description

Deep venous thrombosis or venous blood clot. Blood clot in one of the major deep veins of the legs, arms or pelvis. The clot blocks blood flow through these veins preventing blood to return back to the heart. Smoking, contraceptive pills, long lasting sitting, cancer, being attached to the bed, delivery, intravenous catheters and recent fractures increase a risk of DVT. If the blood clot is released, it can travel through the heart and to stop in pulmonary artery causing potentially life-threatening disease, which is called pulmonary thrombo-embolus, PTE. Some patients suffer from hypercoagulability that causes increased inclination towards blood clots production. Common conditions of hypercoagulation involve thrombophilia of factor V-Leiden, deficit of protein C, deficit of protein S and deficit of antithrombin III.

Symptoms

Pain in the leg, swelling of the leg, groin pain, excessive sensitivity of legs, discoloration of legs, pain in arms, swelling of arms, discoloration of arms.

Overview

Anamnesis will be taken and medical examination will be done. D-dimer blood test is most useful in helping to exclude a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Noninvasive vascular assessment (NIVA) with Color Doppler is performed to diagnose the DVT. Blood tests for determination a hypercoagulable state may be done.

Tests

D-dimer

Additional analyses

Color-Doppler of blood vessels-CDS (NIVA-noninvasive vascular assessment).

Specialists

Hematology, Oncology, General Practice, Internal Medicine, Vascular and Interventional Radiology

Therapy

Anticoagulant injections (such as enoxaparin or heparin) and/or orally (warfarin) are usually given at the beginning. Anticoagulant effect of warfarin can be measured and when the rarefaction of the blood is adequate, therapy is stopped. Big blood clots can be removed from the vein either surgically or by giving medicines directly in that vein.