Prevalence of Venous Thromboembolism Among Privately Insured US Adults

V enous thromboembolism (VTE) includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE); DVT refers to the formation of 1 or more blood clots in a large vein, and PE results when a portion of the blood clot breaks loose, travels through the bloodstream, and partially or completely blocks a pulmonary artery. Venous thromboembolism is an important and growing public health concern; however, a national surveillance system for this condition has not been established. Therefore, many of the current estimates of VTE incidence were derived from geographically defined populations, single institutions, or hospital discharge databases. Hospital discharge data are particularly problematic because many patients are treated on an outpatient basis. Administrative data represent a potential source for monitoring VTE trends in the absence of established public health surveillance systems. We used health insurance claims data from a large, privately insured US adult population to estimate the prevalence of VTE during 2005 through 2006 within that population. To account for the potential for misclassification of DVT or PE diagnoses in claims data, we also explored using different algorithms to calculate our estimates.