Deep vein thrombosis primary prevention

Editors-in-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. Associate Editor-In-Chief: Ujjwal Rastogi, MBBS [mailto:urastogi@perfuse.org]

Overview
Primary prevention, as the name suggest, involve the strategies that help to avoid the development of disease.

Lifestyle modifications
The most common lifestyle risk factors for venous thromboembolism are:
 * 1) Obesity,
 * 2) Inactivity,
 * 3) Cigarette smoking,
 * 4) Avoid dehydration,
 * 5) Maintain normal blood pressure.

Travelers
There is clinical evidence that suggest, wearing compression socks, on long haul flights, reduces the incidence of thrombosis. A randomised study in 2001 compared two sets of long haul airline passengers, one set wore travel compression hosiery the others did not. The passengers were all scanned and tested to check for the incidence of DVT. The results showed that asymptomatic DVT occurred in 10% of the passengers who did not wear compression socks. The group wearing compression had no DVTs. The authors concluded that wearing elastic compression hosiery reduces the incidence of DVT in long haul airline passengers. .