Is the Incidence of Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia Affected by the Increased Use of Heparin for the Prevention of Deep Venous Thrombosis
Chest, 05/01/2012  Clinical Article

Zhou A et al. – The authors conclude that concerns for heparin–induced thrombocytopenia should not be a limiting factor for the systematic implementation of heparin–based venous thromboembolism prophylaxis.

• The authors analyzed among 90,875 patients exposed to heparin products between 2005 and 2009, the number of hematological consultations for thrombocytopenia, requests for heparin–induced antibodies by ELISA, and the number of cases diagnosed with HIT by the hematology consult service.

• The authors observed that despite a doubling in number of patients receiving pharmacoprophylaxis with heparin, there was no significant increase in the number of consultations for thrombocytopenia, number of requests and number of positive HIT tests, or the number of cases diagnosed with HIT.
• The number of cases of HIT was low and represented <0.1% of patients exposed to heparin.