Skye Hathaway, Copy Editor
Young adults are usually not concerned about blood clots, but VCU students Sarah Ralston and Mollie Wheeler are looking to change that by working to educate college students on deep vein thrombosis.
While blood clots often affect older individuals, young people are still at risk of being affected, according to Ralston. She said it is important for students to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of a blood clot in order to medically advocate for themselves.
Ralston and Wheeler, both second-year Doctor of Physical Therapy students, created the project after meeting a father who wanted to spread awareness for DVT in young women after losing his daughter. Together, they work to teach young people about what causes DVT and how they can identify it.
While putting posters up in an exam room at the Medical College of Virginia campus, Wheeler said that she and Ralston spoke to the medical director for VCU Health, who had sent two college-aged women to the hospital for DVT concerns that summer.
DVT may appear as a small patch on your leg or arm, which young people may brush off as a bruise, Ralston said.
DVT most commonly occurs in the leg, but can appear in the arm, according to Dr. Mark Levy, chief of the Division of Vascular Surgery at VCU Health.
Triggered DVT is the most common type, occurring when people experience long periods of immobilization, according to Levy. This often happens when people fracture a leg or have a major surgery.
Untriggered DVT occurs without being triggered by long periods of immobilization and is most often caused by a genetic abnormality in the blood that makes it thrombotic, meaning sticky.
Ralston said her family has a history of blood clots, giving her a genetic predisposition to them.
“I feel like I’m really lucky in the sense that I know that I might be more at risk for developing one,” Ralston said. “I know how to recognize one and I know there’s certain behaviors that would increase my risk even more.”
Oral contraceptives increase the risk of blood clots in women by three times in comparison to those who do not take it, according to Ralton.
According to Levy, young women on birth control should be aware that DVT is a risk, although it affects less than 1% of all women who are on the oral contraceptive pill.
“It [DVT] is, under some circumstances, life threatening because the blood clot that’s formed in a leg and occasionally in the arm, can break off from the wall of the vein and head for the lungs where it causes something called a pulmonary embolus,” Levy said. “A pulmonary embolus refers to a clot that was created or started somewhere else and then traveled in the bloodstream to the lung where it can block off a piece of lung tissue and make it difficult to breathe and oxygenate.”
Ralston recommended that women who have a family history of blood clots ask their doctor whether estrogen is a safe option for them.
VCU Student Health has partnered with Ralston and Wheeler to integrate DVT awareness materials into their standard virtual packets for students.
“When a student comes into the health center inquiring about birth control as a first time user, they send that information out in the virtual packet, just about signs and symptoms, risk factors, stuff like that, which wasn’t previously done,” Ralston said.
Ralston and Wheeler completed their first tabling event with VCU’s RecWell at the Student Organization and Volunteer Fair on Aug. 21, where they spoke to students and handed out CDC approved flyers on DVT. They plan to attend the Petersburg Health Fair and will continue to partner with RecWell for their more targeted events.
Maeve Bauer helped contribute to this article.