The impact of gender differences on the clinical characteristics of critically ill patients with venous thromboembolism: A retrospective, observational study

Abstract

The aim of this study is to describe the general information, disease and treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in critically ill patients, to explore the characteristics of severe patients with deep venous VTE and provide clinical reference data for the prevention and treatment of VTE in critically ill patients. This study carried out a retrospective study on the medical records of patients who were treated in the intensive care unit of Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical College from 2020 to 2022. The general data, general conditions, drug use, past history, VTE prevention measures, post-VTE conditions, and Padua risk score of 297 patients with VTE during the period of hospitalization in intensive care unit (ICU) were classified and statistically analyzed. A total of 297 including 171 male and 126 male patient medical records were included in the analysis, we compared multiple clinical indicators between male and female patients. Compared to women, male patients have a higher acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II score(APACHE-II score) (P = .027), a higher state of consciousness (P = .003), a higher rate of smoking and drinking history (P < .001), a lower rate of heart failure (P = .003) and chronic depression (P = .013), and a higher rate of recommended operations for male patients after VTE (P = .031). The prothrombin time (PT) (P = .041) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) (P = .040) of male patients were significantly higher than those of female patients, while triglyceride (P = .009) and total cholesterol (TC) (P = .001) were significantly lower than those of female patients. The difference in D-dimer (P = .739) was not significant. This study shows that male and female patients with VTE in the ICU have significant differences in general characteristics, general clinical conditions, history of past illness, thrombosis character, and examination items, this may be the reason for the different rates of VTE between male and female patients in the ICU.