Enoxaparin Plus Compression Stockings May Not Reduce Mortality In Severely Ill Patients.

HealthDay  (12/29, Mann) reports, "Severely ill hospital patients are at high risk for developing potentially fatal blood clots, and often wear compression stockings and/or take blood thinners to help lower this risk. However, adding the blood thinner Lovenox (enoxaparin) to the mix does not reduce their chances of dying from a blood clot, according to research  appearing in the Dec. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine." For patients who "were given Lovenox, the risk of death from any cause was 4.9 percent," while "this risk was 4.8 percent among those participants who were given a placebo."

        According to MedPage Today  (12/29, Walsh), researchers "noted that, while thromboprophylaxis in surgical patients has been shown to decrease the rate of lethal pulmonary embolism, acutely ill medical patients may be at risk for death from many causes other than pulmonary embolism, 'thus diminishing the ability of pharmacologic prophylaxis to improve the overall clinical outcome.'" In addition, the study took place in "193 centers, most of which were in India or China," and "rates of pulmonary embolism have been reported to be lower in Asia than in Western countries." Other explanations include "that the use of compression stockings alone was sufficient to prevent the development of the venous clots that can ultimately lead to pulmonary embolism" or "that their study population may have been at a lower risk for thromboembolism than in other studies, by being younger and less likely to be obese, as well as in having low rates of previous thromboembolic events."