The postoperative venous thromboembolism (TREVO) study - risk and case mortality by surgical specialty (original) (raw)

Venous thromboembolism, risk of which is increased in surgical patients, is a preventable cause of morbidity and death. The primary objective of this study was to estimate the incidence of symptomatic postoperative venous thromboembolism in adults at a tertiary university hospital, overall and by surgical specialty. The secondary objective was to analyze severity of and mortality from thromboembolic events. We performed a retrospective study to identify cases of in-hospital postoperative venous thromboembolism, encoded by the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, according to the Joint Commission International criteria. Adult patients admitted for surgery in 2008-2012 were included. Among 67 635 hospitalizations, 90 cases of postoperative symptomatic venous thromboembolism were identified, corresponding to an incidence of 1.33/1000 admissions (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1-1.6/1000). Neurosurgery had the highest risk (4.07/1000), followed by urological surgery...