BACKGROUND: We have given seven to 14 days @entity715 prophylaxis after orthopaedic surgery. Recently, six weeks prophylaxis has been recommended. We wished to evaluate the implications of prolonging prophylaxis. METHODS: We made a very thorough search of the hospital register of diagnoses and the registers of the departments of radiology and nuclear medicine and determined the number of detected @entity1031 complications during a five and a half-year period. RESULTS: We identified 91 cases (0.50%) with @entity1031 during the first six weeks after 18.368 orthopaedic operations: 1.4% after 836 total hip arthroplasties and 1.0% after 1.845 @entity173 . In these two groups 19 @entity1031 complications were registered after the second postoperative week. If it had been possible to prevent all of them by prolonging prophylaxis to six weeks, each avoided @entity1031 would have cost around US   23.700 in additional drug costs alone. One @entity173 @entity1 died from probable @entity887 during the second and one during the fourth postoperative week. No hip arthroplasty @entity1 died from a probable @entity1031 complication during the third to sixth postoperative week. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the frequency of clinically detectable @entity887 and fatal @entity358 is so low during the third to sixth postoperative weeks that prophylaxis beyond two weeks is unwarranted.

Duration of XXXX prophylaxis in orthopaedic surgery.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['patients', 'patient'] @entity173 :: ('MESH:D006620', 'Disease') :: ['hip fractures', 'hip fracture'] @entity887 :: ('MESH:D004617', 'Disease') :: ['thrombo-embolism'] @entity358 :: ('MESH:D008171', 'Disease') :: ['pulmonary embolus'] @entity1031 :: ('MESH:D013923', 'Disease') :: ['thromboembolism', 'thromboembolic'] @entity715 :: ('MESH:D013927', 'Disease') :: ['thrombosis']
@entity715 :: (MESH:D013927,Disease) :: ['thrombosis']
