Effect of Range of Motion Exercises on Prevention of Deep Vein Thrombosis among Neurosurgical Patients

Abstract

Deep Vein Thrombosis, commonly referred to as the ‘silent killers’, the third leading cause of morbidity among critically ill
patients and occurs after the neurosurgery, needs comprehensive care for the prevention of DVT during postoperative periods.
Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify the risk of DVT among the neurosurgical patients in experimental
and control group, to compare the risk of DVT among the neurosurgical patients in the experimental and control group and to
find out the association between risk of DVT with the selected demographic and clinical variables.
Methods: A quantitative, quasi experimental study was done among 62 (31 experimental and 31 control) samples using semi
structured questionnaire to collect the demographic and clinical data and standardized tool (Autar risk assessment scale) to
assess patient at risk for DVT.
Results: The results revealed that among 31 subjects in each group, the experimental group bears 25 (80.6%) subjects with
low risk whereas in the control group only 5 (16.1%) of subjects had low risk. The risk level of DVT was significantly lower
than the control group, the difference was statistically significant (p<0.001). The risk level of DVT had significant association
with selected clinical variables like co morbidity of Coronary Artery Disease at p< 0.05 level.
Conclusion: The result obtained in this study indicated that ROM exercise found to be effective to prevent the risk level of
DVT in the postoperative period in spite of pneumatic compression devices and compression stockings.