Acting Surgeon General Steven K. Galson, M.D., M.P.H. issued a Call to Action to reduce the number of cases of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in the United States.

Current US guidelines for the prescription of potent anticoagulants by surgeons who perform joint replacement operations could be doing patients more harm than good, according to Dr. Nigel Sharrock and his team from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Blood clots can save lives, staunching blood loss after injury, but they can also kill. Let loose in the bloodstream, a clot can cause a heart attack, stroke or pulmonary embolism.

Patients who develop a blood clot in their legs (deep vein thrombosis) or lungs (pulmonary embolism) are at risk for experiencing another blood clot within three years, and patients with pulmonary embolism have a higher risk of death, according to a report in the February 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Young women at risk of having a pulmonary embolism, a potential life-threatening blockage in a lung artery—should first undergo a ventilation/perfusion lung scan (V/Q scan) rather than a CT (computed tomography) angiogram, conclude authors in a paper published in the September Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Radiologists can diagnose venous thromboembolic disease (VTED) in cancer patients earlier by looking more carefully at CT scans of the thorax, abdomen, and pelvis which are regularly done to determine the extent or stage of the cancer, according to a recent study conducted by radiologists at the University College Hospital in Galway, Ireland.

Performing cardiac CTA after coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) can reveal unsuspected and potentially significant findings beyond the heart, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, MD.

The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) released results from a research project warning that the risk of developing fatal blood clots during travel doubles after the passenger has been seated for four hours or more.

Although clots in the lung (pulmonary embolism or PE) are the second-leading cause of sudden death in the United States, blood tests and ultrafast CT scanning to detect PE are being used on so many patients that over 90% of these tests are negative.