Prevalence of thromboembolic (VTE) events in a South London District hospital: a retrospective study

Introduction: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) has been defined by many professionals as the term to describe deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). It is a condition where a thrombus (blood clot) forms in the deep veins usually the lower limbs. DVT can often propagate to the lungs causing PE which can result in significant health complications including instant fatality. The disease occurs in 1 in 20 people in the United Kingdom (UK) at some point during their life time Purpose: To investigate the prevalence of VTE in a South London hospital over a period of 3 years. The objectives of the study were to explore the characteristics of VTE by examining potential correlations with demographic variables of gender, age and ethnicity. Another objective was to distinguish between hospital-associated VTE and community-associated VTE and to identify prevalent types of VTE. Materials and methods: This was a retrospective, quantitative study using convenience sampling. Records of 1728 patients diagnosed with VTE between 1st January 2014 and 31st December 2017 were selected. The data was collected using a clinical computer system to gather patient demographics and identify whether the episode of VTE was related to a hospital admission. Data was analysed using SPSS 23 in order to create descriptive statistics. Spearman’s correlation test was carried out to assess potential correlations between incidences of VTE with age. Jonckheere trend tests were used to assess the significance of trends. Results: The highest incidence of VTE was among the white population n=1470 (85.1%). The average age of the participants in the study was 66.96 years (standard deviation 17.8), There was a positive correlation between incidence of VTE and age (r=0.078, p=0.001). There were more females diagnosed with VTE, n=895 (51.8%) than males n=833 (48.2%). This trend was significant at 0.05. Conclusion: VTE is a concern for the general population and is a major health problem affecting 99 people per 100,000 of the population each year. This common disease is prevalent among all individuals irrespective of age, ethnicity or gender and is not always related to episodes of hospitalization. Further research is needed to examine risk factors and rates of VTE and to establish whether individual events are triggered by transient or acquired influences and causal relationships