New insights into the natural history of thrombo-embolic disease provided by imaging and disease quantification

Abstract

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common disease with a myriad of presentation. It is often difficult to diagnosis with symptoms which are shared with many other disorders. Because of the overlap in symptomatology with other pathologies it is both commonly overlooked when present and commonly considered when absent. The threshold for investigating suspected VTE has dropped over time, in part due to a greater awareness of the disease among clinicians, but also because of the greater availability of diagnostic tests which are both accurate at positively diagnosing VTE and are patient friendly. This has resulted in a mushrooming of the number of diagnostic tests being performed for suspected VTE in radiology departments. As such radiology provides a window into the disease in a way that no other speciality can. All branches of medicine having their share of VTE patients but radiology provides a unique opportunity to study VTE patients as, no matter from which speciality they arise when the disease is suspected, they will almost inevitably end up undergoing a definitive radiological test. There is much still to learn about VTE however developments in modern imaging and computerised databases have advanced our understanding of this common disease. The window that radiology provides into VTE has contributed towards those advances.