Venous thromboembolism prophylactic methods in acute stroke patients - current state of knowledge

Abstract

Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and its sequel, pulmo-nary em-bolism (PE), are serious complications of stroke. There are pharmacological and physical methods to prevent these complications. The authors review the lite-rature and present the current state of knowledge re-garding the effectiveness of each of the DVT and PE prevention methods in stroke patients and cite current Polish, European and American recommendations re-garding this issue. Heparins are the method of choice for the prevention of venous thromboembolism in both ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke patients.