Family history big predictor of clot risk hardly seems like news but Annals of Internal Medicine is playing this familiar song again this week with a new research study. I can remember the famous Dr. Rosendaal talking about the critical importance of family history of blood clots in his 2003 lecture at the American Society of Hematology meeting. People with family history of thrombosis were at least twice as likely as other folks to get a blood clot. This compares to similar numbers for the famous Factor V Leiden or Prothrombin Gene Mutation 20210. Plenty of docs like to check these on patients but how many get a detailed family history? When I hear a history like "My grandma died of a blood clot at age 40 " the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up! I had a lady the other day in the office with that story and a history of stroke symptoms and I decided on coumadin. This may save her untold heartache from stroke in the future regardless of the lack of "thrombophilia" on a blood test workup. http://news.e-healthsource.com/index.php?p=news1&id=625282