Prevalence and Risk Factors of Venous Thromboembolism in Hospitalized Pediatric Patients

The issue to be studied is the prevalence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in hospitalized pediatric patients, and to identify if there are subgroups of patients who may be at higher risk. There are two hypotheses that will be looked at in this study. The first hypothesis is that individual risk factors for VTE in hospitalized pediatric patients are: age \>14, obesity, black race, female sex, presence of a central venous line (CVL), traumatic mechanism of injury, orthopaedic surgery, and use of oral contraceptives. The second hypothesis is that risk factors have an additive effect such that risk stratification can be developed to identify those patients with the highest risk.