Amanda B. Witte, Kyle Van Arendonk, Richard A. Falcone Jr., Suzanne Moody, Heather A. Hartman, Emily Evans, Rajan Thakkar, Kelli N. Patterson, Peter C. Minneci, Grace Z. Mak, Mark B. Slidell, MacKenton Johnson, Matthew P. Landman, Troy A. Markel, Charles M. Leys, Linda Cherney Stafford, Jessica Draper, David S. Foley, Cynthia Downard, Tracy M. Skaggs, Dave R. Lal, Peter F. Ehrlich & David Gourlay
Purpose: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a rare but significant complication among high-risk pediatric trauma patients. The NO CLOT study’s primary aim was to evaluate the safety of chemical prophylaxis against VTE in high-risk pediatric trauma patients with a secondary aim of evaluating the use of screening venous duplex ultrasound (sUS) to identify deep vein thrombosis (DVT). We hypothesized that sUS would detect asymptomatic DVT at a high rate in high-risk patients.
Methods: A prospective multi-institutional study was performed at eight level one pediatric trauma centers from 2019 to 2022. sUS was recommended 7 days after admission for all high-risk trauma patients. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed.
Results: Of 460 high-risk trauma patients, 64/341 (18.8%) remained admitted on day 7 and underwent sUS. Ten of 64 (15.6%) had a DVT identified on sUS (median of 6.5 [IQR 5.2, 7.0] days after trauma). In 277 patients still admitted on day 7 without sUS performed, 15 (5.4%) developed symptomatic DVT (median of 6.0 [IQR 3.0, 8.0] days after trauma. For the sUS cohort, 9/10 (90%) DVTs were associated with an indwelling central venous line (CVL) and occurred either without chemical prophylaxis use at all in 4/10 (40%) or when initiated more than 24-h post-trauma in 6/10 (60%).
Conclusions: In this high-risk cohort, most DVTs were identified in the first week following injury; however, the majority were asymptomatic. Use of sUS at 1-week post-injury increases DVT detection; however, the clinical consequences of asymptomatic detection of DVT remain unknown.
