Blood thinner injections?

[Cornberry]

I had my baby by emergency c section after a long labour last week and had to stay in hospital for five days as I and baby had antibiotics. They also gave me an injection of fragmin every day and said I would need them for ten days so would have to continue having them after I got home. When they discharged me they gave me a six week supply and said I had to take them for that long as I was high risk for DVT having lost 1 litre of blood. When the community midwife from a different hospital came to visit she was very surprised I had been prescribed such a long course, and would have expected a week. Anyone have experience of this? I called the hospital to check and they were certain it was highly advisable to do the six weeks but it seems so extreme...

I had quite a long course as I lost a lot of blood due to placenta praevia. I can't remember quite how long now but it was a few weeks.

In our hospital we work out what's called your VTE score (venous thromboembolism) and the amount of fragmin you're prescribed is based on this score. It takes into account all sorts of things like age, mode of birth, smoking status, family history, blood loss and loads more. We have to rescore new mums daily and sometimes the score changes because a box wasn't ticked previously that is relevant now. Maybe that's what happened?

Also different trusts have different policies regarding fragmin - another hospital I worked in just gave a standard 7 day prescription for post section mums, nobody got 6 weeks worth unless they had a specific medical reason e.g. previous blood clot

Thanks Moochops. Yes that's what they told me, that it was due to the risk factors, but it seemed to just be based on blood loss and c section and risk of dehydration? I don't smoke, I'm 33, no health problems. It's odd... Very frustrating to be given such different advice!

I had emcs with my first dc, haemorrhaged on the table but made a good recovery. I was only given the injections for 10 days post partum and due to over compensating for the blood loss I developed peri-myocarditis. Basically, I had small clots everywhere that passed through my heart causing irritation. After a bleed during delivery you are very high risk for excessive clotting.

Different places do things differently. Here all post cs patients get 10 days standard and then longer based on various risk calculations. My friend lost a lot of blood and had 6 weeks of injections. She is slim, young, healthy and with no other additional risk factors.