wow...I'm glad that I got my flu shot this year...

Ive never had a flu shot, but did I read wrong or did it say that the good effects were excluded if youd already had a vte?

I read the whole thing but all the medical jargin about case studies confused me a little, I know some of you guys are advanced already at reading these kinds of articles so fill me in please?

Im seeing my hemo on monday, and im gunna show him this, maybee i should get one, i meant if it will help prevent me having another pe, id do just about anything!

Cupcake,
I think what you read was this "Patients younger than 18 years old or those who already had VTE, had a diagnosis of active cancer or a history of malignancy less than five years previously, or had a short life expectancy due to other causes were ineligible to participate in the study."


Meaning if you have had a VTE(which YOU did) you could NOT partake in this study...
But yes, check with your hema about the interaction of the Influenza vaccine and warfarin/coumadin.

so dero,
does that mean that it would not be helpful to me for the purposes of further prevention due to the fact that ive had a pe?

Before we get terribly excited about this study, I need to point out two important facts.

First, this was an abstract presented at the American Heart Associations Scientific Sessions 2008. This is not a study that has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Essentially that makes this a "Hey, look at this really cool association we found! We don't know what the relationship is, but won't this be cool to do more research on?"

Second is that in the world of medical research, a test group of 1,454 people (half of whom are controls) is not that many people.
In my field of pediatrics we get excited about these numbers because research on kids is so difficult to do. But in adult medicine, most of the docs I know don't really start to get excited until the total numbers are above 5000.

Me personally, I've had the flu twice and was miserable enough that I hoped I'd die. I get a flu shot every year in September as soon as they come out. It take two weeks after the vaccine to have an immune response, so it's still not too late since most of the country is reporting sporadic cases. My county just reported 6 confirmed flu cases this past week, so I think Texas may be in for a rough year. We usually don't see cases until Jan.

This year I had my PEs in late August, so at my first follow-up appointment on Sept 3rd I got my flu shot. My internist & I figured that the last thing I needed was the flu too.

Just my two cents....

I saw this a bit ago and I got kind of annoyed. As others have already said, the key word is "may." Anecdotally, I got my PEs in January 07 and March 08 - in November of 06 and Nov 07 I'd gotten a flu shot. So evidently it didn't help me in the least!

My .0362cents worth... They offered me the flu shot while I was in the hospital being treated for my PE in October, which I took without any ill effects. Seems the docs there weren't expecting it to cause any negative impact on my condition or future treatment.

Just mentioning this in case any one who thought they should get the flu shot was hesitating for fear it might affect their recovery from a PE.

Jim