Venous Thromboembolism Assessment Model (VTEAM) study

This study aims to work out which people in hospital should be given medication to prevent blood clots.

Background to the research

People who are admitted to hospital are at risk of blood clots that can cause serious illness or death. Small doses of blood thinning drugs (known as anticoagulants) can reduce the risk of blood clots but with a slightly increased risk of bleeding complications.

Tight stockings (known as anti-embolic stockings) and using balloons to squeeze the legs (known as intermittent pneumatic compression) can also help reduce the risk of blood clots.

When these treatments are given as a preventative measure, it is known as prophylaxis. Providing prophylaxis to people in hospital costs the NHS a lot of money.

Risk-assessment tools can be used to determine each patient’s risk of suffering a blood clot on the basis of factors, such as their age or previous illnesses.

Risk-assessment tools could be used to target prophylaxis at higher risk patients who are most likely to benefit but we don’t know how this approach compares to giving prophylaxis to everybody or giving it to nobody.

We also don’t know how high the risk should be before we recommend prophylaxis on the basis of risk-assessment.

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The VTEAM study

We will review all previous studies of risk-assessment tools to determine how well they predict the risk of blood clots. We will then create a mathematical model to simulate the preventative treatment of people who are admitted to hospital.

The model will compare different strategies for providing prophylaxis, including giving it to everybody, giving it to nobody and giving it to people if the risk assessment tool predicts a high risk.

We will use the findings of previous studies to predict which patients in the model will develop blood clots or bleeding.

We will also calculate the costs involved, if it is cost-effective to use a risk-assessment tool to provide prophylaxis, we will need to determine whether it can be successfully used in the NHS.

This evaluation will require us to collect data from a large number of patients without wasting staff time.

We therefore plan to test efficient ways of collecting data that will allow us to evaluate risk-assessment tools without disrupting patient care or taking up staff time.

We will do this by testing our data collection methods at two NHS hospitals.

Study update

This study is currently in recruitment. 

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Project team

Name	Role	Organisation	Contact
Prof Steve Goodacre	Chief Investigator	University of Sheffield	s.goodacre@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Daniel Horner	Co-Chief Investigator	Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust	Daniel.Horner@srft.nhs.uk
Ben Thomas	Study Manager	University of Sheffield	b.d.thomas@sheffield.ac.uk
Abdullah Pandor	Systematic Review Lead	University of Sheffield	a.pandor@sheffield.ac.uk
Sara Davis	Health Economic Modelling	University of Sheffield	s.davis@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Daniel Hind	Assistant Director, CTRU	University of Sheffield	d.hind@sheffield.ac.uk
Mike Bradburn	Senior Medical Statistician	University of Sheffield	m.bradburn@sheffield.ac.uk
Prof Beverley Hunt	Co-Applicant (Haematology)	Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust	beverley.hunt@gstt.nhs.uk
Associate Prof Xavier Griffin	Co-Applicant (Orthopaedic)	University of Oxford	Xavier.griffin@ndorms.ox.ac.uk
Dr Mark Holland	Co-Applicant (Acute Medicine)	Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust	mark.holland@srft.nhs.uk
Associate Prof Kerstin Hogg	Co-Applicant (Thrombosis)	McMaster University	dewitk@mcmaster.ca
Shan Bennet	PPI Representative	Sheffield Emergency Care Forum
Robin Pierce-Williams	PPI Representative	Thrombosis UK
Heather Dakin	Trials Support Officer	The University of Sheffield	h.dakin@sheffield.ac.uk

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Funder and sponsor

This project is funded by the National Institute for Health Research, Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) Programme (project number NIHR127454).

The sponsor is The University of Sheffield.