Impact of the national VTE prevention programme on thrombotic events
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Establishing the impact of the national venous thromboembolism (VTE) prevention programme on post-operative VTE rates in England
IRAS ID
254264
Contact name
Martin Whyte
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Surrey
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 19 days
Research summary
It is estimated that 60,000 cases of in-hospital venous thromboembolism (VTE), ‘blood clot’, occur annually in UK. Failure to diagnose and treat VTE correctly can result in fatal pulmonary embolism (PE). The risk of VTE persists for up to 12 months after surgery, and is particularly high in the first three months. The National VTE prevention programme, launched in 2010, introduced mandatory VTE risk assessment for adults on hospital admission. Existing information on VTE outcomes comes from events occurring in-hospital, using ‘Hospital Episode Statistics’ (HES) data. This doesn’t capture postoperative VTE detected in primary care. Linkage to primary care electronic health records and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data will allow for a multisource perspective of patients’ entire postoperative course.
The aim is to examine the impact of mandatory VTE risk assessment (2010) on the incidence and outcomes of VTE after general surgery and major orthopaedic surgery.
We will link three datasets: The Royal College General Practitioners Research and Surveillance Centre (RCGP-RSC), Hospital Episodes Statistics (HES) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) death certificate data to see whether mandatory VTE assessment led to a reduction of VTE events.
A substudy of this will be to use these three data sources to develop a clinical model (using demographic, biochemical and clinical data) that better predicts the risk of VTE in patients who undergo hip or knee surgery. This may allow more targeted use of anticoagulation for these patients in the future.REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0114
Date of REC Opinion
13 Feb 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion