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VIDEO: Expert discusses treatment according to risk stratification for patients with VTE
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — In this Cardiology Today’s Intervention video exclusive, Victor F. Tapson, MD, FCCP, FRCP, professor of medicine, pulmonary and critical care at Cedars-Sinai, discusses important takeaways from the venous thromboembolism sessions presented at the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy.
“I think the real key at these [VTE] sessions have been how do we risk-stratify, who should get treated aggressively and who shouldn't,” Tapson said. “Who gets catheter-based therapy, who gets systemic thrombolysis and who gets just anticoagulation alone? That's the big theme and we're still working on sorting those things out.”
According to Tapson, while treatment strategies for low-risk patients with VTE are straightforward, intermediate, to high-risk patients are more difficult to assess. “If you're intermediate [or] high risk, that means your right ventricle is abnormal and you have a biomarker: troponin or [type B natriuretic peptide],” Tapson said. “Maybe those are patients that we should be more aggressive with. There has been a lot of discussion about this, a lot of great lectures.”