Evaluation of venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in a major hospital in a developing country

Background Venous thromboembolism is the most common preventable cause of hospital death. Despite that, there is still a large gap between what we know about venous thromboembolism prophylaxis and what is happening in current practice. Objective To evaluate VTE prophylaxis in Al-Basheer hospital and assess the extent of agreement of physicians’ practice with the guidelines. Setting Al-Basheer governmental hospital in Jordan between January 2016 and June 2016. Method In this cross-sectional observational study, patients were randomly selected from medical and surgical wards. The need for venous thromboembolism prophylaxis was assessed according to the American College of Chest Physicians guideline (9th edition) for men and non-pregnant women, and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines for pregnant women. Main outcome measure: rate of agreement of venous thromboembolism prophylaxis with the guidelines. Results The total number of patients was 1030, Patients in the medical wards constituted most of the participants. The rate of concordance with the guidelines was 718/1030 (69.7%) in the total number of patients When the patients were divided into groups: those that required venous thromboembolism prophylaxis and those that did not, the rate of agreement with guidelines in the subgroup that needed prophylaxis 160/456 (35.1%) was lower than the rate in the subgroup that did not need prophylaxis 558/574 (97.2%), p value <0.001. Conclusion venous thromboembolism prophylaxis in Al-Basheer hospital is not appropriate and underused, this might be attributed to the absence of an institutional guideline.