MINHAJ KHAJA: Hello, my name is Minhaj Khaja, and I am a vascular and interventional radiologist. And today I want to talk about deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. Deep venous thrombosis, or DVT, occurs in approximately 200,000 patients every year in the United States of America. Out of those 200,000, 50,000 result in clot going to the heart and lungs called a pulmonary embolism. When the clot travels from an extremity, usually the legs, into your heart and lungs and can result in shortness of breath, difficulty with your heart beating, and potentially result in death. Many different patient types are affected by DVT, and it may be something genetic, where you have a blood clotting disorder, or it could be something as simple as being on a long drive or a long flight where you don't get up and move around and blood starts to clot. Other risk factors include recent surgery, having an infection, being on oral contraceptives in some cases, and a history or active cancer. DVT can present in many different ways in really many different places. But most frequently, we think about it in the legs. And when that happens, it presents with a hot, red, swollen leg that just hurts and aches, usually in your calf. But you can also see it in your arms as well. And in fact, you can also see it in the veins in your neck or in other veins in your body. If you find that you have symptoms of deep venous thrombosis, or you think you have symptoms of DVT, you should go see a primary care physician or go to the emergency room. In cases where the blood clot has traveled to the lungs, you frequently feel short of breath and have chest pain, and I would say you should go directly to the emergency room. It's really important that if you have these symptoms you go and see a physician as soon as possible because there are long-term or even short-term consequences. For example, if you have a hot, swollen leg, that blood clot in there could travel up into your pulmonary arteries and through your heart and cause major issues resulting in difficulty breathing and sometimes your heart failing. In approximately 40% to 50% of patients who have a DVT, that will turn into something called chronic DVT. Chronic DVT is wall adherent. It sticks to the vein wall, and it makes it so that you just have less area for blood to travel through. I think of it kind of like traffic on the highway, where two lanes are shut down that are normally open, causing backups of blood flow. In those situations, patients find their leg becomes heavy, discolored. They may have a little spider veins, and sometimes, you can even get an advanced disease, ulcers, and infections. The treatment of blood clotting disorders, acute and chronic, are handled at UVA in a multidisciplinary fashion with vascular and interventional radiology, vascular medicine specialists, and hematologists, who all work together to provide the patient with the best course of treatment after a thorough discussion of all of the risk factors, and of course, most importantly, their input.