What is a life-threatening complication of deep vein thrombosis?

Answer 1

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is when you get blood clots in the deep veins of your legs (typically the femoral veins). Symptoms of DVT include leg swelling (esp asymmetric or unilateral swelling) and leg pain. The #1 life threatening complication of DVT is pulmonary embolism (PE). PE occurs when a piece of clot from the DVT breaks off and gets returned to your heart with the rest of the venous blood. The clot gets shot into your lungs via the pulmonary artery, where it will eventually get stuck. For a smallish or medium size clot, the classic symptoms are pleuritic chest pain (chest pain that gets worse with a deep breath... it kind of feels like a stitch you get from running too much), sudden-onset shortness of breath, cough (esp coughing up blood or hemoptysis), and rapid shallow breathing (tachypnea). These are the symptoms the textbooks give you, but PE is notoriously hard to diagnose because the symptoms are variable and not specific. For a massive PE, often the patient will die of right-sided heart failure before even reaching the hospital.