The U.S. Surgeon General's 2008 Call to Action to Prevent Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) and Pulmonary Embolism (PE) raised the importance of conducting surveillance for VTE. VTE comprises PE and DVT and collectively is responsible for estimated 350,000-900,000 events and 100,000-300,000 deaths annually in the U.S. However, these estimates are uncertain because no current surveillance is conducted for VTE and thus are derived from cohort studies in selected counties (which often lack racial diversity typical of the U.S.) and then generalized to the U.S population. These estimates are also limited by an inability to differentiate between incident and recurrent events and provoked and non-provoked events. In addition, non-hospitalized patients have not been included in some of these estimates. With the availability of non-invasive and highly sensitive and specific diagnostic procedures of computed tomography (CT) for PE and compression ultrasound (CUS) for DVT, and the implementation of electronic health records, the time is right to establish a surveillance system for VTE events.
Objective
The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish a pilot system to inform future scaled-up national surveillance for Venous Thromboembolism (VTE).