Incidence of venous thromboembolism and adequacy of thromboprophylaxis in 2380 acutely-ill hospitalized patients: Results from the PROFMiG cohort study

Introduction: Hospital-acquired venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a major cause of preventable deaths. Incidence of VTE and adequacy of thromboprophylaxis have rarely been reported in low-resourced countries. The aim of this study was to estimate the incidence of VTE and to evaluate the adequacy of thromboprophylaxis in acutely-ill medical hospitalized patients.

Methods: The PROFMiG is a prospective cohort study conducted in Brazil. We consecutively enrolled adult (> 18 years) acutely-ill hospitalized medical patients at admission. Risk assessment for VTE was evaluated by the IMPROVE7 (International Medical Prevention Registry on Venous Thromboembolism). Outcomes were death and VTE events during hospital stay up to 90 days after discharge. All VTE and death events were adjudicated. We also evaluated pulmonary embolism-related death and adequacy of thromboprophylaxis. VTE incidence was estimated by competing risk methods.

Results: A total of 2380 participants was included. Median age was 70 years, 56.1 % women, median length of hospital stay was 10 days. A total of 2052 (86.3 %) patients were classified as low-risk for VTE, 30 (1.3 %) patients had objectively confirmed VTE, and 1449 (60.8 %) received inadequate thromboprophylaxis. The overall mortality rate was 14.0 %. Cumulative incidence of VTE was 2.0 % (95 % confidence interval 0.9 %-3.8 %) at 130 days after admission when considering death as competing risk.

Conclusion: The cumulative incidence of VTE in this cohort corroborates with that reported in high-resourced countries. Despite recommendation, thromboprophylaxis was mostly inadequate. We suggest the adoption of competing risk analysis to estimate the cumulative incidence of VTE in hospitalized patients.