Risk of Venous Thromboembolism Among Individuals who Frequently Travel by Flight for Work

Abstract

Many research studies have found that venous thromboembolism is common among frequent travellers in all form mainly air travel. Few Indian studies in acute care settings had also mentioned travel history as an important element. Nowadays a section of corporate employees are frequent flyers in India. Hence, we conducted a pilot project to assess and analyze the risk category among these employees. A snowball sampling was used as a sampling technique. The data collection method was done using a google survey link. An anonymous questionnaire link with a unique code of four digit inserted by the participants, had been circulated among the identified study participants. Out of the total 30 respondents, 13 (43.3%) were at high risk, 8(26.7%) at medium risk and 9 (30%) at low-risk categories of venous thromboembolism development. Pre-existing risk factors and post-travel observation (within 8 weeks of flight travel) were recorded and analysed with SPSS 22 version. Family history was significantly associated with risk category of the employees with chi-square (χ²) value of 22.46 (p<0.05). For high-risk category employees, the venous thromboembolism risk was increased by 44 times (OR 44, 95% CI 3.4-573.4) and for medium-risk category employees 13 times (OR 13.3, 95% CI 1.07-166.4) with the history of infectious disease exposure. Overall presence of certain pre-existing clinical parameters (like heart disease, congenital heart disease, varicose veins, pregnancy, exposure to infectious disease) were significantly associated with a chi-square (χ²) value of 6.09 (p<0.05). Further knowledge level and practice level of these frequent corporate flyers had a statistically significant association with their risk category. This paved the way to develop holistic need-based guidelines covering all relevant key aspects of venous thromboembolism including the head-neck-foot exercise to prevent venous thromboembolism while flying.

Keywords: Indian corporate employees, frequent flyers, venous thromboembolism (VTE)

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References

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Sarkar, P., Srivastava, S., Mani, S., & Gauba, A. (2023). Risk of Venous Thromboembolism Among Individuals who Frequently Travel by Flight for Work. International Journal of Advancement in Life Sciences Research, 6(4), 15-24. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31632/ijalsr.2023.v06i04.003