Blood clot deaths warning

Up to 25,000 people die needlessly every year as a result of failure in preventing blood clots in UK hospital patients, leading medical experts have claimed.

Around 60,000 people every year in the UK die from clots known as venous thromboembolisms (VTE), which include deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.

Deaths from VTE account for ten per cent of all hospital deaths – ten times greater than deaths due to MRSA and five times more deaths than breast cancer, Aids and road traffic accidents combined.

Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) today, David Fitzmaurice and Ellen Murphy from the University of Birmingham argue that despite the “considerable evidence” for the preventative VTE treatment thromboprophylaxis, “it is poorly implemented in the UK”.

“A combination of factors may be responsible – as a result of poor education, health professionals’ lack awareness of this condition; VTE is often a silent disease (80 per cent of deep vein thromboses are subclinical); and VTE often occurs after discharge from hospital,” they write.

“Prescribing costs may also be a barrier to the use of thromboprophylactic drugs, but this is not clear.”

Last month the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) issued official guidelines to reduce the number of deaths from VTE, including that every adult should have a mandatory VTE risk assessment on admission to hospital and standards implemented to ensure compliance with these assessments.