Clinical and Laboratory Observation
Incidence of venous thromboembolism in infants and children: Data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey

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Pulmonary embolism (PE), deep venous thrombosis (DVT), and the combination were not rare in pediatric patients in the United States from 1979 to 2001. They were more frequent in infants 0 to 1 year of age and in teenagers 15 to 17 years of age than in children 2 to 14 years of age. Pregnancies doubled the rate of DVT in teenage girls.

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Data sources

The number of infants and children discharged from nonfederal short-stay hospitals in the United States with a diagnostic code of PE or DVT was obtained from the NHDS using data sets for newborns and non-newborns.5 The NHDS is based on data abstracted from a national probability sample of discharges from short-stay nonfederal hospitals in 50 states and the District of Columbia.5 The NHDS samples about 8% of hospitals and about 1% of discharges. Estimates of the number of infants and children

Results

From 1979 through 2001, PE was diagnosed at hospital discharge in 13,000 infants and children, and DVT was diagnosed in 64,000. Some had both PE and DVT. The number with PE and/or DVT (VTE) was 75,000. Rates of diagnosis were 0.9 PE/100,000 children/year, 4.2 DVT/100,000 children/year, and 4.9 VTE/100,000 children/year (Table II). The rates of diagnosis of DVT and of VTE did not change from the triennial periods 1979-1982 to 1999-2001.

Rates of diagnosis of PE, DVT, and VTE were higher in

Discussion

The rates of diagnosis of PE, DVT, and VTE were highest in infants 1 to 23 months of age and in teenagers, particularly teenage girls. Black children had approximately twice the rates of PE, DVT, and VTE as white children.

We showed, as others have shown, a double peaked curve with the highest rates of diagnosis in infants <1 year old and a second peak in teenagers.4 Teenage girls had twice the rates of DVT and VTE as teenage boys, although in younger children the frequencies were comparable.

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