Therapy | Thrombosis in pregnancy

Therapy

As a rule, patients are treated with an anticoagulant. These are drugs that prevent or reduce blood clotting. Heparin is often administered to pregnant women.

Special care must be taken here to ensure that the drugs do not enter the placenta, which means that they must not penetrate the placenta, so as not to endanger the unborn child. Once the blood clot has been stopped, the body breaks down the remnants of the clot using the body’s own immune system alone. Especially when the body breaks down the thrombus, there is an increased risk of suffering a thrombosis again.

Particularly during this time, care must be taken to ensure that anticoagulant medication is taken. It is important to check the blood coagulation values regularly in the course of drug therapy. For this purpose, an appropriate blood count must always be taken.

In most cases, compression is added to the drug therapy. However, this depends on the intensity of the limb to be compressed, as it can often cause great pain. Mobilization is also important, since the thrombus can grow more easily if the patient moves little and even spends a lot of time lying down.

Nevertheless, here too, much depends on how severe the thrombosis is and how much pain the patient experiences. In many cases, proper mobilization is not possible at all and patients have to remain in hospital for some time. Excessive movement, however, can cause the thrombus to loosen mechanically and trigger a pulmonary embolism. For this reason one should follow the doctor’s instructions exactly.

Prognosis

Some things you can do yourself to reduce the risk of thrombosis during pregnancy. Many women get compression stockings during pregnancy. It is important to mention that support stockings are not suitable for women with an increased risk of thrombosis, as they are only used by healthy people to prevent tired and thick legs.

However, they are far too elastic to protect against thrombosis. Compression stockings have the function of compressing the veins and thus making it easier to close the venous valves again. They also reduce the diameter of the vessels, allowing blood to flow quickly again.

In addition, tissue fluid is pressed back into the veins and can thus be transported away. In addition to compression stockings, movement is also very important for the expectant mother. Standing or sitting for too long makes the blood in the legs sink.

Just as long lying down. However, if you move, the blood flow is stimulated and the leg veins are relieved. It is generally very important to drink enough fluids.

During pregnancy, however, drinking takes on a much greater and more important role. If there is more fluid in the body, the blood is diluted and can thus improve its flow characteristics. In this case, however, it is important not to consume too many dehydrating drinks or food.

Since these remove the important fluid from the body again. Among the dehydrating foods are many teas, coffee, but also cucumbers, pineapple, asparagus, tomatoes, celery, raw vegetables and potatoes. If the patient still smokes, this should be stopped and avoided.

This is also one of the risk factors for thrombosis. In addition, elevating the legs can also help to prevent too much blood from accumulating in the leg veins. Of course, it is possible to take appropriate blood-thinning medication to prevent this.

Low molecular weight heparin is ideal during pregnancy because it is not placental and thus does not endanger the unborn child. However, whether such a drug is or can be taken as a preventive measure must be determined by the treating physician and thus prescribed. To this end, it is important to discuss the risk of thrombosis at the beginning of the treatment.