Travel and risk of venous thrombosis

In 1998 the term economy class syndrome was coined to describe the associat ion between travel and thrombosis. A fair risk estimate, however, has not b een done. We report the results of a prospective study, in which we kept th e effect of bias to a minimum. We compared travel history in 788 patients w ith venous thrombosis with that of controls with similar symptoms but in wh om the disease had been excluded. For air travel alone, the odds ratio was 1.0 (95% CI 0.3-3.0); also, no association was recorded for other methods o f transportation. We have shown that, there is no increased risk of deep ve in thrombosis among travellers.