Profilaxis de enfermedad tromboembólica venosa en pacientes adultos sometidos a cirugía: Estudio multicéntrico en instituciones públicas y privadas de Argentina

introduction: the actual incidence of venous thromboembolism (vte) is difficult to quantify. more cases are asymptomatic and generally are not diagnosed, but it is known that pulmonary thromboembolism (pte) is the third cause of death at hospitals. the lack of diagnosis of this pathology impairs the reliability of its incidence estimates and there are few studies which have assessed the effectiveness of preventive measures. objectives: the main objective was to determine the proportion of high and medium risk surgical patients in which preventive measures against vte are prescribed in several medical institutions of the country. secondary objectives were to assess the quality of the prescribed preventive measures and to correlate the type of preventive measure with the professional background of the medical doctor who made the prescription, the level of complexity of the institution as indicated by the number of beds and the kind of institution, whether public or private. material and methods: the study included the review of 258 clinical records of surgical patients with medium and high risk for vte in 9 hospitals of the country from 25 to 30 july 2011. results: the prescribed preventive measures were adequate in 46.51% of patients who met the requirements for their prescription. there were significant differences between public and private institutions. private institutions prescribed these measures more often in patients with medium risk. cardiologists were less likely and institutions with a larger number of beds were more likely to prescribe the preventive measures. conclusions: the low compliance with guidelines on prevention of vte in this study shows that there is a need to implement strategies to promote the use of simple and cost-effective preventive measure.