Chemoprophylaxis Plus Early Ambulation

Pulmonary embolism (PE) can be a devastating postoperative complication and the leading cause of mortality after thoracic surgery. PE together with deep venous thrombosis (DVT) is called venous thromboembolism (VTE), whereas PE caused much more serious situation than DVT. Huge amount of data have demonstrated that thromboprophylaxis after surgery is very important to prevent postoperative VTE, especially after orthopedic surgery and plaster surgery. Moreover, for thoracic surgery, American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) has published prevention guidelines of VTE in non-orthopedic surgical patients and has been used widely, but unfortunately prophylaxis measures had often been underused in China. However, to be honest, there could be a big difference between Chinese and western populations, for example, what guidelines recommended thrombolysis therapy in diagnosed massive or sub-massive PE patients is tissue type plasminogen activator (t-PA) 100 mg, while in China 50 mg has the same effect. So investigators wanted to establish if the prophylaxis measures what they were using currently are suitable for Chinese thoracic surgical patients.