Victorian Guideline for the Prevention of Venous Thromboembolism in Adult Hospitalised Patients

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), a pathology that includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is a common cause of preventable mortality and morbidity among hospitalised patients. In addition to mortality, serious morbidity includes pulmonary hypertension and post-thrombotic syndrome. Approximately 50-75 per cent of patients admitted to hospital have at least one risk factor for VTE, while 40 per cent have 3 or more.

This guideline provides information for use by all Victorian health care clinicians and all Victorian health services and is intended to guide the provision of VTE prophylaxis aligned to the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare (ACSQH) clinical care standard for adult patients admitted to hospital.

For the purposes of this document, an adult is defined as 16 years of age and older.

This document does not include recommendations for the following:

• VTE prophylaxis in Paediatric patients (<16 years of age)
• diagnosis or management of suspected or active VTE
• therapeutic anticoagulation.

Where health services have their own established guidance, we are not mandating the use of this guideline, but we recommend that you compare your guidance to our guidance as a baseline standard to ensure that all elements of the ACSQH standard are considered as part of your local guidance.