Clinical research studyIncidence of Thrombocytopenia in Hospitalized Patients with Venous Thromboembolism
Section snippets
Data Sources
The number of patients discharged from short-stay non-Federal hospitals throughout the US with a diagnostic code for pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis, or the combination of pulmonary embolism and deep venous thrombosis, venous thromboembolism, from 1979 through 2005 was obtained from the National Hospital Discharge Survey.2 Among these patients, the number with secondary thrombocytopenia was determined. The National Hospital Discharge Survey consists of data obtained annually from
Results
Over the 27 years of study, among 10,554,000 patients discharged from short-stay hospitals with venous thromboembolism, secondary thrombocytopenia was coded in 38,000 patients (0.36%, 95% CI, 0.32-0.40%) (Table 2). During the 14-year interval from 1979 through 1992, secondary thrombocytopenia was rarely coded in patients with venous thromboembolism. During that time interval, only 7000 cases of secondary thrombocytopenia were recorded on discharge codes among 4,823,000 patients with venous
Discussion
We assumed that the vast majority of patients with pulmonary embolism or deep venous thrombosis would have been treated with heparin, and thrombocytopenia in such patients, therefore, was heparin-associated. The diagnosis of immune heparin-induced thrombocytopenia is usually based on a fall of the platelet count below 150 × 109/L,6 or either a decrease in platelet count of more than 50% from baseline or a platelet count <100 × 109/L7 or <150 × 109/L.8 We assume that these criteria were the basis for
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Funding: None.
Conflict of Interest: Russell Hull has received research support from Sanofi-Aventis and Leo-pharma. He has been on advisory boards for Sanofi-Aventis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bayer, and Pfizer. None of the authors have any conflict of interest with the content of this article.
Authorship: All authors had access to the data and a role in writing the manuscript.