Venous thromboembolism risk factors and prophylaxis of elderly intensive care unit patients in a Chinese general hospital.

BACKGROUND

To analyze the venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk factors and prophylaxis of elderly patients in the intensive care unit (ICU).

METHODS

We retrospectively recruited 200 elderly patients with VTE and 234 non-VTE patients. VTE risk factors were got from data of all patients. The sensitivity and specificity of the Caprini scores and Padua scores were calculated. We use the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC) to evaluate each score.

RESULTS

We found that male sex, sepsis, being bedridden (>72 hours), pneumonia, history of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease, heart failure, glucocorticoid treatment, PaO2, hemoglobin (Hb), prothrombin time (PT), and international normalized ratio (INR), D-dimer (D-D), mechanical ventilation, and continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) were significantly associated with VTE in elderly ICU patients (P<0.05). For elderly patients in the ICU, the predictive ability of Caprini risk assessment model was better than that of the Padua risk assessment model. Among the high VTE risk elderly patients, the number of patients receiving mechanical prophylaxis in the high bleeding-risk group was higher than that in the low bleeding-risk group (P<0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS

Elderly patients in the ICU have the highest risk of VTE and high bleeding risk; decisions concerning clinical prophylaxis should be made after appropriate information on the risk and benefit on an individual level is considered.