A researcher at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City is part of a select panel of international experts to help develop new evidence-based clinical guidelines used by physicians worldwide for the diagnosis and treatment of blood-clotting disorders, one of the most common cardiovascular diseases in the United States.

-Team@CMHF

• Scott M Stevens, MD, co-director of the Thrombosis Clinic at Intermountain Medical Center, says the new guidelines are critically-needed to ensure that clinicians worldwide are using the most advanced information and protocols available to properly diagnosis deep venous thrombosis, or DVT.
• DVT mainly affects the large veins in the lower leg and thigh.
• The clot can block blood flow and cause swelling and pain. When a clot breaks off and moves through the bloodstream, this is called an embolism which can get stuck in the brain, lungs, heart, or other area, leading to severe damage.
• Rapid treatment for DVT is crucial to prevent potentially fatal complications but the symptoms are often mistaken for a sprain or tendon injury, says Dr Stevens.
• DVT is the third most common cardiovascular disease in the United States, behind only heart attack and stroke, he says.
• Prompt treatment is very important to prevent the clot from leaving the leg and traveling to the lungs, heart or brain.
• Physicians need good information on the best way to diagnose a DVT.
• Dr Stevens was chosen to help draft a new chapter for the ninth edition of the guidelines as the previous editions did not included a chapter on diagnosing DVT.
• Dr Stevens says the new chapter provides a road map for the best-proven and most cost-effective ways to diagnose DVT.
• The process is complicated and involves sophisticated algorithms.
• Physicians may have difficulty performing those kinds of complex calculations in their day-to-day practice, so the guidelines teach them to use decision trees that lead them to accurate diagnoses by asking strategic questions.
• Physicians from around the globe — everyone from primary care doctors to cardiologists, pulmonologists, orthopedic surgeons, and neurologists — will learn from the new guidelines at conferences, seminars, and journals in the coming months.

For further reading log on to
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-guidelines-dvt-diagnosis.html