Symptoms of PE include shortness of breath, chest pain and, in the extreme, collapse and death due to respiratory failure and lack of blood flowing from the lungs back to the heart. This fragment of the original clot is called an embolus.Īn embolus that lodges in a blood vessel in the lungs results in the life-threatening condition called pulmonary embolism (PE). One such complication involves a piece of the blood clot in the leg vein breaking away and travelling through the circulation to lodge in a small blood vessel elsewhere in the body, blocking blood supply in this area. What are the symptoms of DVT?ĭVT can result in no symptoms, or it can cause swelling and pain in the affected leg, for example, pain in the calf when the foot is flexed upwards.Īlthough DVT is a serious condition, it is the relatively rare complications of DVT that can be life-threatening. If the blood flow from the legs to the heart is further hampered, for example, by a person not moving around for a long time, then blood can pool in the leg veins, sometimes leading to a clot forming inside the leg veins - so-called deep vein thrombosis. The veins in the legs therefore use the squeezing, pump-like action of the leg muscles - as occurs with normal walking - and a system of non-return (one-way) valves in the walls of these veins to help move blood back towards the heart. The return of blood from these deep veins to the heart is made more difficult by the force of gravity and the relatively long distance that blood needs to travel back to the heart, compared with return from other parts of the body. DVT is a condition in which a blood clot or ‘thrombus’ forms in the deep veins of the legs.
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