When I first heard the story about the woman who died when a blot clot formed in her legs I figured phtoooey!! There must have been something wrong with her and what the hell was she thinking sitting in the same position for 14 hours.
Then the media started to really pick up on it and it became Economy Class Syndrome and I figured…“great here we go with another pseudo science health scare” and figured it would blow over in a week.
Then this morning a colleague reported in from his hospital bed. He had developed a lung clot on the flight back from Australia and had been seriously ill and hospitalised over the weekend (he’s still not 100%). The doctors tell him its DVT.
This guy is a health nut and is very well travelled so it was a real surprise. Oh and he was in Buisness class with an A seat and plenty of leg room and had been walking around quite a bit.
Of course DVT is real. The clots in and of themselves are not the problem; even left to its own resources without anticoagulants of any kind, the body will dissolve and reabsorb the clot. The danger is when a piece of that clot breaks free from the vein wall and just goes off floating around on its own. That floating clot is now called an embolus and it could go to the lungs- causing breathing trouble or to the brain, causing a stroke, or to the heart causing infartion just to name a few things.
There are many causes for the formation of DVT, prolonged sitting being only one. Having a prior injury to the area makes you more likely to form clots again, poor circulation, sticky platlets, disease processes all play a part. Follow up medication is crucial.
Fair nuff.
Thread Title should have read Airline Travel Induced DVT.
ATIDVT.
(sounds like a new video accelerator no?)
I fear my deep veins have long ago given up all hope of being treated well along with my liver and various other body parts who reckon that if my body is indeed a temple that it must be used to worship the evil and debauched God of having an irresponsibly good time.
Yep its Monday afternoon lingering hangover time again.
Yep, it’s real. And it’s not just economy-class flights that do it.
My wife was laid up with really bad bronchitis for about a week and a half in January of 2000. She felt so lousy she literally couldn’t move and spent most of her time on the couch or in bed. She developed a leg clot that broke loose and lodged in her lung, causing a pulmonary embolism that killed her. The fact that all this happened about 10 weeks after we got married didn’t make it any easier to take.
** Zappo **
Apologies for bringing up a subject that must give you some unhappy memories. I regret my earlier levity. That’s a horribly sad story and certainly gave me pause. ATIDVT is obviously all too real a danger and unfortunatly in your case anything but a myth. Lesson Learned.
Damhna, please. There’s no need to apologize. I didn’t mean to seem snippy or short in my last post. What I meant to express was that it’s something that can happen under different circumstances and it can have very serious consequences.
Please don’t think I took offense to your thread or got upset or anything, 'coz I didn’t.
Zappo
DVT is real, and it is serious. As Zappo pointed out, chunks of clot can break off and cause fatal pulmonary emboli, stroke, or can cause other organs to become infarcted and die by cutting off the blood supply.
Fortunately, there are ways of treating it. Coumadin (a blood thinner), aspirin (which also thins the blood), and direct infusion of clot-busting drugs can help.