Help me understand why I was on blood thinners

[lostatsea999]

Hello,

After a cross wire with nhs 111 yesterday, can anyone help with why I was on blood thinners. I ended up recently going near an urgent treatment centre who probably rightly query why nhs 111 asked what they did.

Admitted to hospital query blood clot earlier this year. Possible infection.
After blood cultures taken, I had x-ray done, from there it was decided I'd need to have emergency surgery, there wasn't time to get a second option due to the time of day, I just remember being prepared for theatre, being told the risks and being told it is going up to your lung, we need to move. Oh how I wish I'd said what is going up to my lung but I just wasn't with it.

I spent 12 days in bed and from the day after surgery I had blood thinners injections daily for the whole of the stay.
Is that because I was in bed / non mobile for a period of time?
It is because of clot risk specifically after surgery?
it is that they couldn't get compression socks on me?
I remember reading into blood clots but somehow got the impression they can't always be proven or something like this.

There was a great non-understanding in the end why I'd had need for surgery, I've done as much as I can to understand, had a consultation with the surgeon, requested medical notes. I mean it sorted me and I'm grateful to be here but I just couldn't answer nhs111 why I'd been on them.

Thank you for any insight, I recognise it is a long shot.

I had abdominal surgery recently and was given blood thinners every day I stayed in hospital. I had those socks on tried to be mobile.

Get your notes from the hospital
PALS can help you with this
sounds like you had or were at risk of a pulmonary embolism - this is a clot which breaks off and goes to your lung
blood thinners helps disperse clots
alsp being immobile after a surgery can mean you’re at higher risk of a clot so again sensible to be on blood thinners

Yes would have been due to your surgery .

It's standard now to give hospital patients blood thinners after surgery while they're less mobile to prevent a clot developing. So standard that I'm surprised 111 asked why.

As said, get your notes or book an appointment to talk through what the issue was.

Every hospital inpatient has them here due to being in bed and immobile. It's standard afaik (frequent hospital inpatient)

It’s standard procedure to give nearly all inpatients blood thinners now certainly all the ones who are post op. There is a risk assessment done for everyone on admission and blood thinners would be given to anyone who is less mobile than their usual for whom the risk of clots outweigh the risk of bleeding. This is a preventative dose and not a treatment dose which is given where there is proof or a strong suspicion of an actual clot being present that needs to be dissolved.

i think it’s after every surgery! I even had them after my c-section.

Less mobile, much higher risk of clots. Sometimes patients are discharged home from hospital and have to self inject for a number of weeks after. It is a preventative treatment even those who can get the hosiery on usually have them.

Even without surgery, if you're not very mobile for whatever reason and an in patient they tend to give blood thinners as a precaution

It is unusual to physically operate on a blood clot. Mostly they just give a treatment dose of the blood thinners to dissolve it but in that case you stay on the blood thinner for some months post discharge often in tablet form so if it was just when you were in hospital it suggests a preventative.
Which bit of you had a clot (leg, lungs, somewhere else eg heart or a blood vessel?) and which bit was operated on?
It can be hard to distinguish a blood clot in your leg from other causes such as infection but usually a scan will tell. Blood clots in the lungs can be confused with infection on scans too.
Agree with making a SAR for your notes if you are really puzzled as to what went on.

it will depend very much on what sort of clot it was and what the operation was - and it sounds very much like something's got lost in translation because it's not usually hard to work out why someone was prescribed blood thinners.

Some of the possibilities might be.... if it was for post-op prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism (a preventative dose of blood thinner to stop someone developing a DVT) then there are easily googleable risk scores and that may well explain things. Realistically, most adults having major emergency surgery tick enough boxes to get at least a prophylactic dose for a while post-op. If it was part of the treatment for a diagnosed DVT then the course would have been longer and with ongoing oral blood thinners. If it was a more unusual type clot (eg. an arterial clot or one in an organ rather than a leg) then blood thinners may have been a really important part of the treatment. It's less common to have blood thinners after a haematoma type of clot, but again that might depend on what other risk factors there are for developing a dvt and how happy the surgeons are.
It should be obvious from your discharge summary but if not then hopefully your GP will know the rationale, or ask the surgeon/whoever's doing your follow up.

I've had two lots of major abdominal surgery in the last eighteen months and both times I was prescribed blood thinners to inject myself with daily for 30 days after the op, to help prevent blood clots while I was not very mobile.

Agree with a previous poster who said it doesn't matter whether you've had surgery or not. If you're staying in hospital it's standard to be given a injection of blood thinners every day as a matter of course, it's a precaution because you're not moving much.

I’m not familiar with the health care system in the UK but for some reason were you told to get lab work done?? Was it possible labs were abnormal and you had some sort of a scan and were told “it is going up to your lungs”? I’m thinking you might have had a DVT which was felt to be traveling to your lungs (which would then be a pulmonary embolism). That is a life threatening diagnosis. After that you would need to be on blood thinners for whatever time your doctor specifies to prevent it from happening again. I had a dvt for other reasons and am also on them. I am also a nurse and that is what we do here in the US but again, this is possibly not the same for everyone or for patients in the uk. (DVT: deep vein thrombosis)(it’s been awhile so I don’t remember what the particular scan is called that’s diagnostic of a DVT).