PhD defence J.M. (Jay) Bakas

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Patients with an iliofemoral or iliocaval deep vein thrombosis (DVT) will develop post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS) more frequently than patients with a femoropopliteal or calf vein DVT. Treatment with venous stents could relief acute symptoms and signs of DVT and decrease the risk of PTS development. Invasive treatment with venous stents are used for treatment of PTS in the chronic phase as well.  
One of the topics within this thesis are long-term outcomes, including stent patency and patient-reported outcomes. Patency loss was common within the first year after treatment with venous stents, but secondary patency is high at the long-term: 98.1% for acute DVT (n= 53) and 92.1%  for PTS (n= 76). Physical disabilities are common in PTS, even after successful treatment with venous stents: emphasising that prevention of PTS is better than cure. For acute DVT patients, attention to mental functioning levels is deserved besides attention to the physical consequences after treatment. 
We also found that assessment of pre-operative inflow of the deep femoral vein and femoral vein is important, since impaired inflow increases the risk for stent patency loss in PTS. Future research should develop objective criteria to define “sufficient inflow”, and develop methods to improve inflow as well. Cessation of post-interventional anticoagulant therapy might be safe for a selected group of patients, which should also be confirmed in prospective studies.
Treatment with venous stents was involved in various extraordinary cases. These cases demonstrate the great applicability of endovenous treatment methods, offering future perspectives.