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Guidelines for Anticoagulation Therapy for Secondary Prevention After Deep Vein Thrombosis



Case

Slide 6

June 2011

Now let’s take a case of a patient who falls into neither of these categories. I would underscore that this particular patient represents a common individual or common clinical scenario presenting with a thrombotic disease. So this is a 37-year-old gentleman who complains of left-leg pain and swelling and is found by duplex ultrasound to have a popliteal deep vein thrombosis. He doesn’t have any antecedent risk factors to explain the thrombotic event. His family history is negative and he has undergone thrombophilia testing, all of which is negative or normal. He now comes to you 3 months after he has been on warfarin therapy and wants to know what to do next. And so in this slide is the potential advice that you might give to this patient.

When seeing patients with unprovoked or idiopathic venous thrombotic events and discerning the duration of therapy, most individuals will fall into 1 of 3 categories. Either they will want to stop warfarin therapy because they feel that they have had enough therapy and simply don’t want to continue with warfarin, or they will fall into the category where they don’t want to ever suffer another thrombotic event and would like to continue with warfarin therapy. But perhaps 50 percent of patients do not know what to do and it is for these individuals that this question applies.

Case

 


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