Travelers Face Greater Risk of Leg Clots

July 7 -- MONDAY, July 6 (HealthDay News) -- A review of past research confirms what many experts have long believed: People who travel bear a significantly higher risk for developing potentially life-threatening blood clots in their legs.

That risk, the analysis finds, is up to three times higher for travelers when compared to non-travelers. What's more, the risk rises the longer the trip -- 18 percent higher risk for every two hours of travel, and 26 percent higher risk for every two hours of airplane travel.

"For the first time, we've identified conclusively that long distance travel is associated with a higher risk of getting a deep vein clot, and that the risk is a sizeable," said study co-author Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian who works in the division of cardiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "Previously, this had been assumed to be a plausible risk. But, pooling all of the worldwide data together, we were able to identify this risk clearly."

Mozaffarian and his colleagues report their findings in the July 7 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or venous thromboembolism (VTE), this serious condition can sometimes lead to a pulmonary embolism, where a clot that forms in the leg migrates to the lungs and can cause death.

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Given that by 2010 an estimated 2.5 billion passengers across the globe will be traveling by air alone, the researchers noted that any connection between DVT risk and travel could have an impact on a wide swath of the population.

So, to definitively nail down the connection between travel and DVT, the review authors conducted an in-depth analysis of 14 previous travel-related DVT studies, chosen from more than 1,500 studies.

In total, the chosen studies covered 4,055 cases of DVT, in which patients had traveled by a variety of transportation modes. All the studies had also included non-traveling patients for comparative purposes.

The research team observed that half the studies had concluded that there was an association between DVT and travel, while the other half had found no significant correlation.