Background and Goal of Study: Venous thromboembolism is one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients, causing approximately 10% of all hospital deaths. Surgical patients are a high-risk population to suffer venous thromboembolism. RIETE prospective registry data show 12% of patients presented symptomatic venous thromboembolism in the eight postoperative weeks. The highest incidence occurs in cancer, orthopedic and trauma surgery.

It’s necessary to unify different prophylactic strategies according to the patient’s thrombotic risk and type of surgery to minimized incidence. Our center does not have a unified antithrombotic protocol. Thus, we decided to study the daily perioperative practice. 

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was designed to analyze all patients undergoing all surgeries during one week in February 2017. Variables collected included: type of intervention, thrombotic risk (CAPRINI scale), use of intraoperative intermittent mechanical compression devices, hospital stay, and pharmacological prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism during hospital stay and discharge. Outpatients and urgent surgery were excluded. Descriptive statistical analysis was performed with the SPSS program, 24th version.

Results and Discussion: 191 patients were included. Patients intervened CAPRINI average was 5’6 (SD 3.5), and 46.9% were considered high risk patients (CAPRINI >5). Cardiac (50%), general (52%), traumatology (61%), vascular (80%) and thoracic surgery (100%) had the higher proportion of risk patients. 9% of patients used intraoperative pneumatic compression boots, vascular surgery used them more extensively (40%). This measure was used without risk discrimination, since there was no significant difference according to CAPRINI (7.8% vs 10.8%).

Despite CAPRINI’s average, 22% of the patients did not receive any prophylactic measure, and 67% of patients did not receive antithrombotic measure at discharge. No thromboembolic events were detected in any patient.

Conclusions: There is no uniformity between the different surgical services to define antithrombotic prophylaxis both pre and postoperatively. CAPRINI scale is not taken into account for the use of intermittent mechanical compression device, even assuming a significant economic expense. The need for the development of a protocol that unifies criteria and awards intermittent mechanical compression equipment to patients who have a higher thrombotic risk is evident.

02 / Evaluation of antithrombotic prophylaxis measures in post operated patients in a third level hospital