Trauma-induced pulmonary thromboembolism: What's update?

Trauma-induced pulmonary thromboembolism is the second leading cause of death in severe trauma patients. Primary fibrinolytic hyperactivity combined with hemorrhage and consequential hypercoagulability in severe trauma patients create a huge challenge for clinicians. It is crucial to ensure a safe anticoagulant therapy for trauma patients, but a series of clinical issues need to be answered first, for example, what are the risk factors for traumatic venous thromboembolism? How to assess and determine the status of coagulation dysfunction of patients? When is the optimal timing to initiate pharmacologic prophylaxis for venous thromboembolism? What types of prophylactic agents should be used? How to manage the anticoagulation-related hemorrhage and to determine the optimal timing of restarting chemoprophylaxis? The present review attempts to answer the above questions. (c) 2021 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Chinese Medical Association. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

Trauma-induced pulmonary thromboembolism is a major cause of death in severe trauma patients, posing a challenge for clinicians due to the presence of coagulation dysfunction in these patients. Addressing various clinical issues, such as assessing coagulation status and determining the optimal timing for pharmacologic prophylaxis, is crucial for ensuring safe anticoagulant therapy.