Related Articles Antithrombotic therapy for venous thromboembolic disease: American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines (8th Edition). Chest. 2008 Jun;133(6 Suppl):454S-545S Authors: Kearon C, Kahn SR, Agnelli G, Goldhaber S, Raskob GE, Comerota AJ This chapter about treatment for venous thromboembolic disease is part of the American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines (8th Edition). Grade 1 recommendations are strong and indicate that the benefits do or do not outweigh risks, burden, and costs. Grade 2 suggests that individual patient values may lead to different choices (for a full understanding of the grading, see "Grades of Recommendation" chapter). Among the key recommendations in this chapter are the following: for patients with objectively confirmed deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or pulmonary embolism (PE), we recommend anticoagulant therapy with subcutaneous (SC) low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH), monitored IV, or SC unfractionated heparin (UFH), unmonitored weight-based SC UFH, or SC fondaparinux (all Grade 1A). For patients with a high clinical suspicion of DVT or PE, we recommend treatment with anticoagulants while awaiting the outcome of diagnostic tests (Grade 1C). For patients with confirmed PE, we recommend early evaluation of the risks to benefits of thrombolytic therapy (Grade 1C); for those with hemodynamic compromise, we recommend short-course thr ...