Main findings
postoperative blood coagulation, DVT, knee arthroplasty, pain, VTE
DVT
The present study investigated the duration of applying VFP for the prevention of VTE in patients receiving hip and knee arthroplasty and found that six hours a day might be the optimal duration of using VFP in terms of VTE incidence, postoperative blood coagulation examinations, pain outcomes, and comfort scores. Patients treated with 6-hour VFP had the lowest incidence of DVT, lowest D-dimer, highest APTT, lowest pain score, and highest comfort score, compared with the other four groups, suggesting that 6-hour VFP was the most favorable duration of VFP application. Additionally, a series of risk factors for predicting DVT was identified in the study. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the optimal duration of VFP application in patients undergoing hip and knee arthroplasty in a multicenter prospective clinical trial.