“Shaida was basically as complex as a patient can get for DVT issues. She had a chronically occluded IVC filter, extensive DVT and her iliac veins were completely occluded. That alone would be a complex case. But she also had a blood thinner allergy. She had the whole constellation of difficult issues.”
—ZLATKO DEVCIC, MD
The IVC filter “The doctor came in and was just kind of pale and shaky,” Shaida said. “He said, ‘We have to get you in tomorrow morning and get an IVC filter put in to keep them from going to your lungs and your heart.’”
On Thursday, March 17, Shaida had an IVC filter inserted. By Sunday, March 21, she was in immense pain and having mobility issues. When she woke up from
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a nap, she discovered she couldn’t move her right leg. It had swollen, and her toenails were blue.
Shaida went to the ER and received full body imaging, which revealed that the IVC filter had become completely thrombosed.
“My legs were completely full of clots,” Shaida said. “From the filter down to my toes, it was just nothing but nonstop clots.
And my leg was swelling up because the filter was completely clogged.”
On Monday, Shaida had her D&C as planned, and several days later she had a thrombectomy and her filter was replaced. She spent a week in the hospital for recovery, received Heparin for her clots and was looking forward to being discharged—until she developed HIT. Her left leg, which had previously been fine, was now full of clots. She would need another thrombectomy— but not until her platelets rose.
“It turns out I had the worst case of HIT they’d ever seen at that hospital. They couldn’t quantify it,” Shaida said. “It took 2 weeks to bring me out of HIT.”
Finally stable, Shaida had her thrombectomy. At this point, she had spent nearly a month in the hospital.
The IVC retrieval Per standard guidance, Shaida was to have her IVC filter removed within the next 3 months. But this was spring of 2021—COVID was still rampant in her area, and the hospital was overrun. Her removal was pushed back until November, 4 months later than initially planned.
“It turns out that now the vein was so full of old clots and scar tissue that it had cemented the filter into the vein,” Shaida said.
Hear from Yoseline, a 22-year-old woman who underwent a thrombectomy procedure for deep vein thrombosis.
14 IRQ | FALL 2024
She underwent two different attempts at filter retrieval—the first attempt perforated the vein, and while the second attempt was successful at collapsing the filter, the physician couldn’t remove it; he bent his tools during the attempt, and then chose to stop.
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