There are many ways to give you this information and you should not necessarily be alarmed.
After a DVT the vessels will indeed be blocked by the clot. That is the problem. It can take months for the vessels to revascularise and other veins will enlarge to take over returning blood from the limb to the heart. This is called collateral flow and is normal.
So your doctor could equally truthfully have said 'everything is as expected'!
Over months or years it may resolve but I really wouldn't worry about it. After all, if you have a coronary artery bypass the surgeon takes out the vein to use as a graft, so anyone who has had this operation is permanently in this situation! As I posted a year ago you will always have an increased risk of recurrence. You may also be interested that the new anticoagulants are gaining approvals around the world and being used more widely. Within a year we expect to have an antidote which will allow us to reverse bleeding complications, and this will probably see them replace warfarin. Hopefully the regulators will allow more pilots to fly as blood tests, INRs and 'control' will be no longer applicable.
If you are off anticoagulants I would be interested to know if you are flying again and if not why not........
Last edited by Radgirl; 25th Aug 2014 at 09:28.
Reason: More information I just thought of