Group spotlights blood clot danger

• By JOE GYAN JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Mar 11, 2008 - Page: 5B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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JEFFERSON — Complications from blood clots kill more Americans annually than breast cancer and AIDS combined, but Melanie Bloom was unaware of that painful truth until her husband died from a clot nearly five years ago in Iraq.

NBC News correspondent David Bloom was covering the Iraq war when he died from deep-vein thrombosis — a fatal blood clot.

The clot that traveled to his lung and ended his life was partly from long hours he spent cramped in a military tank while reporting.

“He lost his life not to a bullet or an IED but to a blood clot,’’ Melanie Bloom, national spokeswoman for the Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis, said Monday during a public seminar at Ochsner Health System.

Two days before he died, Melanie Bloom said, her 39-year-old husband complained to her that he was having terrible leg cramps.

“No one really knew about this insidious killer,’’ she said.

Melanie Bloom, the foundation and its partners, including Ochsner, are trying to change that by spreading the message that DVT — while a killer — is preventable.

David Bloom’s tragic death in April 2003 helped bring the preventable dangers of DVT into the public eye. In March 2005, Congress designated the month of March as DVT Awareness Month.

Every year, up to 2 million people in the United States suffer from DVT and its primary complication, pulmonary embolism. Of those who develop pulmonary embolism, up to 300,000 die each year.

Dr. Steve Deitelzweig, vice president of medical affairs and chairman of hospital medicine at Ochsner, called DVT “one area we know we can do better with.’’

“Deep-vein thrombosis sounds complicated, but it’s simply a blood clot, or thrombosis, that forms in the deep veins of the leg,’’ he said.

“DVT can be life threatening if it travels to the lung and becomes a pulmonary embolism and blocks circulation.’’

Signs and symptoms of DVT include pain, swelling and tenderness, discoloration or redness in the affected area, and skin that is warm to the touch. Signs and symptoms of pulmonary embolism include shortness of breath, chest pain, and coughing up blood.