Why was antiphospholipid antibody syndrome not included?
To the Editor: I would like to point out a potentially dangerous error in the article, “Genetic susceptibility to VTE: A primary care approach” (published in the July 2009 issue), by Herbert D. Ridings, MA, PA-C; Lynn Holt; Rebecca Cook, MD; and Marisa B. Marques, MD. In this article, there is a blatant misuse of statistics to calculate the 20 most common causes of VTE. Table 1 lists seven disorders that are, in the authors’ opinions, the most common causes of VTE; the conditions can affect 0.02% and 0.3% of the population, and 2.0% of whites. There is no mention in this list of a disease that effects between 2% and 5%—depending on which study you read—of the population: antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (APS or APLS, lupus anticoagulant syndrome, Hughes syndrome, and a number of other misnomers). This disease causes venous thrombosis, arterial thrombosis and is a truly systemic disease that, in the opinion of some of the world’s top rheumatologists, is the predominant cause of clotti
