Pre-, intra-, and/or postoperative arterial and venous thromboembolism prophylaxis for breast surgery: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Both thromboembolism and excessive bleeding following breast surgery could result in multiple surgical procedures, breast reconstruction failure, or even mortality. This systematic review and meta-analysis of 5617 female breast surgery patients compared pharmacological prophylaxis to nonpharmacological prophylaxis interventions during the pre-, intra-, and/or postoperative time points and evaluated associated outcomes and complications. The PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Google Scholar databases were systematically and independently searched. Patient and clinical characteristics, surgical and medical interventions, outcomes, and complications were recorded. Eleven of the 344 studies queried were eligible for systematic review and meta-analysis, with results from 26 of the possible 117 outcomes and complications using strict PRISMA and Cochrane guidelines. Patients receiving intraoperative pharmacological prophylaxis for breast surgery were found to have more reoperations and more occurrences of any bleeding, while patients receiving postoperative pharmacological prophylaxis were found to have more occurrences of any bleeding than patients receiving nonpharmacological prophylaxis. Patients were more likely to receive preoperative pharmacological prophylaxis if they had diabetes mellitus and postoperative chemoprophylaxis if they had higher BMIs. Patients administered pharmacological prophylaxis during the pre-, intra-, and/or postoperative time periods did not show a significant decrease in deep vein thrombosis and/or pulmonary embolism or increase in hematomas compared to those administered nonpharmacological prophylaxis.