DVT Risk Management Beyond The Socks

It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small

❝I know I am at higher risk of DVT after having hip surgery, any advice beside compression stockings?❞

First of all, a swift and easy recovery to you!

Surgery indeed increases the risk of deep vein thrombosis (henceforth: DVT), and hip or knee surgery especially so, for obvious reasons.

There are other risk factors you can’t control, like genetics (family history of DVT as an indicator) and age, but there are some that you can, including:

• smoking (so, ideally don’t; do speak to your doctor before quitting though, in case withdrawal might be temporarily worse for you than smoking)
  • See also: Nicotine Benefits (That We Don’t Recommend)!
• obesity (so, losing weight is good if overweight, but if this is going to happen, it’ll mostly happen in the kitchen not the gym, which may be a relief as you’re probably not the very most up for exercise at present)
  • See also: Lose Weight, But Healthily
• sedentariness (so, while you’re probably not running marathons right now, please do try to keep moving, even if only gently)
  • See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, And Move More

Beyond that, yes compression socks, but also frequent gentle massage can help a lot to avoid clots forming.

Also, no surprises, a healthy diet will help, especially one that’s good for general heart health. Check out for example the Mediterranean DASH diet:

Four Ways To Upgrade The Mediterranean Diet

Also, obviously, speak with your doctor/pharmacist if you haven’t already about possible medications, including checking whether any of your current medications increase the risk and could be swapped for something that doesn’t.

Take care!