Abstract
Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) are important complications in orthopedics. There is high risk of DVT or PTE in patients with hip fractures before surgery, but reports of such cases have been scarce.
We examined the incidence of preoperative DVT in 113 patients with hip fractures (34 males and 79 females, mean age 82 years). Computed tomography (CT) with contrast medium was used for diagnosis. The period from injury to CT was recorded, and D-dimer was assayed.
The incidence of DVT was 7.1% (8/113 patients). The average period from injury to CT was 3 days (from 0 to 20 days), and the average D-dimer level was 35.5μg/ml (from 0.9 to 289.0μg/ml) in the patients with DVT. There was no evident relationship between preoperative DVT and D-dimer level.
The results of this study indicate that preoperative DVT is not rare in patients with hip fracture, and that close attention must be paid to possible DVT from the time of injury.
