Footnotes

• Competing interests ATC is a medical consultant, and has received consultancy and clinical trial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, BMS, Daiichi, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Mitsubishi Pharma, Pfizer, Portola, Sanofi-aventis, Schering-Plough and Takeda. ATC is an advisor on VTE prevention to the UK Government Health Select Committee, the All-Party Working Group on Thrombosis, the Department of Health and the NHS. ATC is also an advisor to Lifeblood: The Thrombosis Charity and is the founder of the European educational charity the Coalition to Prevent VTE.

• Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.