This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Venous Thromboembolism  • Cardiovascular System  • Quality of Care  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Radiologic Imaging  • Diagnosis  • Ultrasonography  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

In Reply: In response to Drs Quere and Righini, we believe that a second ultrasonography is warranted only if the first ultrasonography was limited to the proximal veins and the D-dimer test was abnormal. Our study demonstrated that a second ultrasonography can be safely spared in patients with a normal 2-point ultrasonography and a normal D-dimer at baseline. Our findings confirm data from 2 cohort studies investigating the role of D-dimer in the management of patients with suspected DVT.^1-2 In both studies the prevalence of DVT at the second ultrasonography test was comparable with that reported in our trial (3.7%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.2%-5.6%¹; and 5.7%; 95% CI, 1.9-12.8%,² respectively). The comparison with the study by Cogo et al³ may not be applicable because in that study all patients with a normal baseline ultrasonography underwent repeat testing at 1 week.

We agree that the treatment of distal thrombosis . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Enrico Bernardi, MD, PhD
enrico.bernardi@ulss7.it
Department of Emergency and Accident Medicine
Civic Hospital
Conegliano, Italy

Giuseppe Camporese, MD
Angiology Unit

Franco Noventa, MD
Group of Clinical Epidemiology
University Hospital
Padua, Italy

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?