Most patients with DVT or PE recover completely within several weeks to months without significant complications or long-term adverse effects. However, long-term problems can occur, with symptoms ranging from very mild to more severe.
10% – 30% of people will die within one month of diagnosis. Among people who have had a DVT, one third to one half will have long-term complications (post-thrombotic syndrome) such as swelling, pain, discoloration, and scaling in the affected limb.
Typically, your body will naturally dissolve the blood clot after the injury has healed. Sometimes, however, clots form on the inside of vessels without an obvious injury or do not dissolve naturally. These situations can be dangerous and require accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
Life goes on after you've been diagnosed with a blood clot. While it may take time to recover, there's no reason why you can't continue to live the life you love.
It usually takes about 3 months to treat a DVT. If you aren't likely to have another one, you may be able to stop taking blood thinners at that point. People whose chances are higher may need to stay on them for years. Talk with your doctor about what's best for you.
The primary treatment for DVT and PE is anticoagulation with blood thinners. These medications increase the time it takes for blood to clot. They prevent new clots from forming and existing clots from growing larger. Anticoagulants do not dissolve a clot.
The mortality rate after venous thrombosis is about 20% within 1 y [2],[8]. Mortality is 2- to 4-fold higher for patients with pulmonary embolism (PE), of whom 10%–20% die within 3 mo after the event, than for patients with a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) of the leg [2],[9]–[11].
It is important to start treatment right away for DVT. It takes about 3 to 6 months for a blood clot to go away.
Anyone can develop a deep-vein blood clot at some point in their life. About 2% to 5% of people do. And once you've had DVT, you're a lot more likely to get it again. About 3 in 10 people get a second clot within a decade of their first.
The majority of patients do not suffer a recurrence. However, their risk is higher than for the general population. The degree of increased risk depends upon individual circumstances such as location of the clot, number of prior clots, and underlying medical conditions.
It's important to raise awareness about blood clots because they are serious medical conditions that can cause illness, disability, and even death. Anyone can be affected, but certain risk factors, such as pregnancy, cancer and its treatment, and hospitalization can increase a person's risk for a blood clot.
The length of time you will stay in the hospital for treatment of a blood clot varies. The average hospital stay length is between five and seven days. However, some people may only stay for two or three days while others stay for two to three weeks.
1) Constriction of the blood vessel. 2) Formation of a temporary “platelet plug." 3) Activation of the coagulation cascade.
Blood clots can be very serious, so symptoms of blood clots should be evaluated by a doctor immediately. If not treated, a clot can break free and cause a pulmonary embolism—where the clot gets stuck in a blood vessel in the lung, causing severe shortness of breath and even sudden death.
If a clot in an artery breaks free and travels through the circulatory system, it can cause blockages affecting the heart, lungs, and other organs—potentially shutting them down. The results can be deadly. Thrombosis affects up to 900,000 people in the United States per year and kills up to 100,000.
Venous thrombosis is a disease of aging, with a low rate of about 1 per 10,000 annually before the fourth decade of life, rising rapidly after age 45 years, and approaching 5–6 per 1000 annually by age 80 (6).
Does blood clot pain come and go? Unlike the pain from a charley horse that usually goes away after stretching or with rest, the pain from a blood clot does not go away and usually gets worse with time.
Your risk for blood clots also increases with older age, a family history of DVT, a previous DVT, cancer, certain genes, COVID-19, heart failure, obesity, pregnancy, sickle cell disease, smoking, spinal cord injury, stroke, untreated varicose veins, and use of birth control pills or hormone replacement therapy.
Approximately 60% of patients will recover from a leg DVT without any residual symptoms, 40% will have some degree of post-thrombotic syndrome, and 4% will have severe symptoms. The symptoms of post-thrombotic syndrome usually occur within the first 6 months, but can occur up 2 years after the clot.
Most people will make a full recovery after a pulmonary embolism and do not experience long-term complications. However, some people develop: post-thrombotic syndrome, which causes swelling, pain, and skin discoloration.
The mean life expectancy after diagnosis of NVAF was 43.3 months. In a Kaplan‐Meier analysis, patients who were treated with warfarin had a mean life expectancy of 52.0 months, whereas those who were not treated with warfarin had a corresponding life expectancy of 38.2 months (Δ = 13.8 months, p < 0.001) (fig 1).
The good news is that DVT is preventable and treatable if discovered early. Venous thromboembolism (VTE), a term referring to blood clots in the veins, is an underdiagnosed and serious, yet preventable medical condition that can cause disability and death.
While a pulmonary embolism can be life-threatening, most patients survive DVT and need to learn how to live with the risk of recurrence.
Although many people with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) recover completely, up to 40 percent continue to experience symptoms in their arms or legs for years after their initial diagnosis.