Cancer, especially pancreatic, ovarian, lung cancer, and cancers that have spread to other parts of the body.Cardiovascular disease, mainly heart failure.Lying horizontal or sitting for long periods of time causes the flow of blood to slow and to pool in the legs.Long journeys, i.e.: sitting for several hours or more in a plane, train, bus, or car.Bed rest, ie: being confined to bed after a serious illness (eg: stroke), serious injury, or after surgery.Pregnancy (during pregnancy, the weight of the baby pressing on veins in the pelvis can slow blood return from the legs, which leads to blood pooling in the legs).Being overweight, especially women who smoke and/or have high blood pressure.Certain inherited disorders make the blood more prone to clotting.Having a family member who has had a blood clot in the past.However, a person’s risk of pulmonary embolism can be increased by various factors, including: Personal and family history Risk factorsīlood clots, and a subsequent pulmonary embolism, can develop in anyone. Examples include a bubble of air, part of a tumour, or fat from the marrow of a broken bone which can travel in the bloodstream to the lungs. Sometimes, substances other than a blood clot are responsible for pulmonary embolism. The formation of a clot in a deep vein is known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). Those blood clots typically come from the deep veins of the legs, especially the calves, but may less commonly originate in other parts of the body. Pulmonary embolism is usually caused by a blood clot (a solid clump of blood) becoming lodged in an artery that supplies blood to the lungs. Of the people who develop a pulmonary embolism, 10% die within the first hour and 33% die subsequently from recurrent embolism. It has been estimated that each year approximately one in every 3,500 New Zealanders will develop a pulmonary embolism. Prompt diagnosis and treatment reduces the risk of serious medical complications and death. Pulmonary embolism occurs when an artery in the lungs becomes blocked, in most cases by blood clots that travel to the lungs from elsewhere in the body.
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