RESUMO
Venous thromboembolism is a complication that occurs frequently among adult hospitalized population. Its risk and prevention had been widely studied and divulgated in the surgical field, but less investigated in the clinicalarea, despite that the most feared expression of this disease, pulmonary thromboembolism, represents 5 to 10%of all hospital deaths, this phenomena forces to apply preventive measures.In 1986 the Massachusetts study published for the first time the numerous risk factors of hospitalized populationand the use of prophylaxis was only 32% of the hospitalized population. Thirteen years ago, a Peruvian SocialSecurity Hospital revealed the high prevalence of multiple risk factors for deep venous thrombosis in hospitalizedpopulation as well as the application of prophylaxis in less than 30% in such risk population. A year ago theENDORSE (1) multicentric study indentified that 55% of adult hospitalized population in medical services had risk of developing deep venous thrombosis and that only 39.5% were receiving adequate prophylaxis.Consensus guidelines in prophylaxis for this complication exist since 15 years ago, nevertheless such knowledge had not been translated into actions and apparently guidelines had not been always applied. The aim of delivering this document is to provide to the Peruvian medical community a tool to avoid the most frequent and mortal, preventable complication in adult hospitalized patients in medical services. This document is based on the eighth consensus conference on antithrombotic therapy, in national and international guidelines and publications about deep venous thrombosis and in the contribution of experts in Peruvian real life setting.