Vice-President Dick Cheney was diagnosed with a DVT today.  What is a DVT?  DVT stands for Deep Vein Thrombosis.  Arteries carry blood rich in oxygen to the tissues, and veins return the blood back to the heart. There are 2 main vein systems in the legs, the deep veins, and the superficial veins.  The deep veins live in the muscles compartments of the legs and carry most of the blood back towards the heart, doing about 90-95% of the vein work.  The superficial vein system is the one closest to the skin that sometimes manifests itself as varicose veins.  When one develops a DVT, the deep system develops blood clots.  This is a potentially lethal condition if not diagnosed and treated appropriately.  The treatment of choice is blood thinning for 3-6 months.  The point of thinning the blood is to prevent further enlargement of the blood clot, as well as to try and stop blood clots from breaking off and going to the lungs.  It is a misconception that blood clots from the legs to to the heart.  They actually pass through the heart and lodge in the lungs where they do the damage.  The only situation where they might not end up in the lungs is the patient has a congenital hole in the heart, where the clots might flip through the heart and end up in the arterial circulation, such as in the brain or leg arteries.  When clots end up in the lungs, they are known as Pulmonary Emboli (PE).  Many cases of DVT have minimal symptoms, and the onus on diagnosis and treatment is to first suspect that the patient has a DVT.  The diagnosis is made very reliably by Duplex ultrasound testing, a non-invasive test in which the veins are visualized using ultrasound.  Patients who have an untreated PE with a DVT have a very high mortality from recurrent PE.  For more information on DVT and PE, there is a section of a website I have created that you can visit and look at.  the URL is www.my-varicose-veins.com.       

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Posted By: vasculardoc | Mar 5th