(Press-News.org) Treating hospital patients with thigh-length surgical stockings, rather than knee-high socks, can reduce life threatening blood clots, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that knee-high stockings, which are similar to flight socks, do little in stroke patients to prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a life threatening form of blood clot that can travel up into the heart and lungs, .
The CLOTS (Clots in Legs Or sTockings after Stroke) study from the University of Edinburgh highlights that the clot rate in stroke patients was higher among those fitted with the shorter stockings than for those with longer stockings.
Another study, published last year by the same researchers, showed that thigh-length stockings did not usefully cut the risk of DVT in stroke patients.
This new study shows that short stockings are even less likely to help patients. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence have changed their guidelines based on these findings and no longer recommends that stockings are used for stroke patients.
However, stockings are also very widely used to prevent blood clots in patients who undergo surgery. Clinicians mostly use short stockings, which are cheaper and easier to fit than thigh-length stockings. In Scotland, for example, about three-quarters of stockings used by the NHS are short.
This study questions whether the widespread use of short stockings is appropriate given the greater risk of clots associated with their use. Use of short stockings may result in many more patients suffering potentially life-threatening clots.
The CLOTS trial included more than 3,000 stroke patients from 112 hospitals in nine countries.
It is by far the biggest study to test stockings.
Stroke patients fitted with below-the-knee, stockings were 30 per cent more likely to develop deep vein thrombosis than patients fitted with thigh-length stockings. This could be because the most serious type of blood clots tend to be in the thigh, researchers suggest,
Martin Dennis, Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Although we have shown in previous work that thigh-length stockings are not very effective in reducing the risk of DVT after a stroke, we believe that the results of this trial may have important implications for the millions of patients undergoing surgery each year."
"Millions of patients worldwide are fitted with stockings each year. Unless reliable evidence emerges that short stockings do actually reduce the risk of DVT, long stockings should always be used in preference."
Although trials have shown that stockings reduce the risk of DVT in patients undergoing surgery, these have only tested long stockings. The researchers have not identified any studies which show that below-knee stockings work.
David Clark, Chief Executive of Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, said, "More than 150,000 people a year have a stroke in the UK and it is vital they receive the best possible treatment. This important research, which was seed funded by Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland , shows conclusively that short compression stockings do not benefit stroke patients. We can now focus our efforts and research funding on finding a treatment which will reduce the risk of clots. "
The team from Edinburgh are now testing another type of device which actively massages the legs to keep the blood moving which they hope will prevent CLOTS in stroke patients. The results from that trial are expected in about three years.
INFORMATION:
The CLOTS – Clots in Legs or sTockings after Stroke – trial was funded by the Medical Research Council (UK), the Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland charity and the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office. The research was published in the journal The Annals of Internal Medicine.
END
The forest in the Amazon Basin produces its own rain. During the wet season, aerosol particles, which serve to condensate clouds and precipitation here, mainly consist of organic material. These aerosols are released by the rainforest itself. This has been demonstrated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, who are now able to draw conclusions about the mechanisms of this ecosystem: the high content of organic material indicates that the Amazon Basin acts as a largely self-contained biogeochemical reactor during the rainy season. The results ...
»Goal, goal, goal!« fans in the stadium are absolutely ecstatic, the uproar is enormous. So it's hardly surprising that the security personnel fail to spot a brawl going on between a few spectators. Separating jubilant fans from scuffling hooligans is virtually impossible in such a situation. Special surveillance cameras that immediately spot anything untoward and identify anything out of the ordinary could provide a solution. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin have now developed such a device as part of the ...
More and more car manufacturers are equipping their vehicles with image sensors – e.g. to register the presence of pedestrians or vehicles in the blind spot or to detect obstacles when parking. The sensors must be able to function in extremely high temperatures and in blazing sunlight. If they are installed behind the rear view mirror or on the instrument panel, for example, they can get very hot. The Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS in Duisburg has developed a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) image sensor for an industrial ...
Healthy reefs with more corals and fish generate predictably greater levels of noise, according to researchers working in Panama. This has important implications for understanding the behaviour of young fish, and provides an exciting new approach for monitoring environmental health by listening to reefs.
Contrary to Jacques Cousteau's 'Silent World', coral reefs are surprisingly noisy places, with fish and invertebrates producing clicks and grunts which combine to produce cacophonies of noise. Each reef is subtly different depending on the size and composition of the ...
The rocks of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta—the highest coastal mountain on Earth—tell a fascinating tale: The mountain collides and then separates from former super-continents. Volcanoes are born and die. The mountain travels from Peru to northern Colombia and finally rotates in a clockwise direction to open up an entirely new geological basin. Smithsonian scientists were part of a four-year project to study Santa Marta's geological evolution. Their findings are published in the October 2010 special issue of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences.
The study ...
Is the US health system comprehensively meeting the needs of returning veterans? With the recent attention to mental illness in returning soldiers, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in particular, little research has focused on the medical care needs of those returning from Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Dr. Susan Frayne, from the VA Palo Alto Health Care System and Stanford University, and colleagues.
Their research highlights that veterans suffering from PTSD also suffer more medical illnesses than do those with no mental health ...
TORONTO, Ont., Sept. 20, 2010 – A drug commonly prescribed for people with high cholesterol may also be effective in treating prostate cancer, according to new research by Dr. Xiao-Yan Wen at St. Michael's Hospital.
Rosuvastatin—a statin drug sold as Crestor—suppressed the growth of transplanted human prostate cancer cells in mice.
"Our data provided solid pre-clinical evidence and a strong rationale for clinical trials of statins in the treatment of prostate cancer," said Wen, whose research appears in the September issue of European Urology, the journal of the European ...
The United States could achieve significant health care savings if it achieved widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), but insufficient privacy protections are hindering public acceptance of the EHR concept, according to a new paper from researchers from North Carolina State University. The paper outlines steps that could be taken to boost privacy and promote the use of EHRs.
"Electronic health records could reduce costs in the U.S. by an estimated $80 to 100 billion each year," says Dr. David Baumer, head of the business management department at NC State ...
Children who have a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes might be identified earlier by way of tell-tale genetic indicators known as biomarkers. Some of those new biomarkers might be pinpointed in research led by Nancy F. Butte and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's National Institutes of Health.
Butte is with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, where she is a professor of pediatrics. ARS is USDA's principal ...
Saranac Lake, N.Y. – Given the many pressing concerns of the day, fear of plague probably isn't what causes most Americans to lose sleep. But for those whose responsibility it is to combat bioterrorism, plague is among the highest priorities. Those charged with that mission include scientists like medical researcher Steve Smiley, whose lab at the Trudeau Institute is working to develop a vaccine that will protect the public against weaponized forms of plague. The Institute, which is dedicated to studying how the immune system responds to infectious diseases, is at the forefront ...
