4 ms·

A friend of mine takes Bayer on long hauls due to its blood thinning properties. Not sure if that's proper medical advice, but...

• smokey_the_bear 16y ago
  Aspirin is recommended to prevent blood cloths on planes. You should also wiggle your toes and flex your legs at least once an hour. My brother, who has had a blood clot, gets up and walks the length of the plane and back at least as often.
  • hugh3 16y ago
    Any statistics on the actual frequency of death due to DVT? All I remember is that I never heard of it until a few years ago, then there was a sudden spate of well-publicised cases, and nowadays I never hear of it any more except in the little movies which airlines insist on playing me in order to reduce their liability.
    • smokey_the_bear 16y ago
      I don't have statistics off hand, except that I read somewhere that 10% of people get some kind of blood clot on a transatlantic flight, but most of them dissolve on their own quickly. Anecdotally though, it's the only thing that's afflicted anyone young that I know personally, and three people very close to me have had them in their 20s. (only one was a blood relative, so it's not just genetics). All of the people I know had substantial risk factors for them, smoking, birth control pills, or long flights. Which are also relatively common things, and enough to scare me. My brother had his first one in 2001, before the media blitz about it, and doctors were very surprised by it. But they seemed to notice a pattern of young, highly athletic people getting them in the year or two after that. One theory was that bruises on the legs create a conducive environment to clot formation. Also, although none of the people I know have died, it has substantially lowered their quality of life. Their clots won't totally go away, so some of them are on blood thinners for life which restrict what activities they can do, and are very expensive. And one of them has to have surgery to install filters in his legs.