HILARY CLINTON RECEIVES BLOOD THINNERS FOR CLOT

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is under observation after receiving medication for a blood clot that was discovered during a follow-up exam for her recent concussion.

WASHINGTON — Doctors treating Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a blood clot say the clot formed in her head but they stress that they are confident she will make a full recovery.
The kind of blood clot in the skull that doctors say Clinton has is relatively uncommon but can occur after an injury like the fall and concussion the secretary of state was diagnosed with earlier this month.
Doctors said Monday that an MRI scan revealed a clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind Clinton's right ear.
The clot did not lead to a stroke or neurological damage and is being treated with blood thinners, and she will be released once the proper dose is worked out, her doctors said in a statement.
The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.
In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton has been at New York-Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday, when the clot was diagnosed during what the doctors called a routine follow-up exam. At the time, her spokesman would not say where the clot was located, leading to speculation it was another leg clot like the one she suffered behind her right knee in 1998.
Clinton had been diagnosed with a concussion Dec. 13 after a fall in her home that was blamed on a stomach virus that left her weak and dehydrated.
The type of clot she developed, a sinus venous thrombosis, "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said neurologist Dr. Larry Goldstein. He is director of Duke University's stroke center and has no role in Clinton's care or personal knowledge of it.
The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull — it's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein explained.
Dr. Joseph Broderick, chairman of neurology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, also called Clinton's problem "relatively uncommon" after a concussion.
He and Goldstein said the problem often is overdiagnosed. They said scans often show these large "draining pipes" on either side of the head are different sizes, which can mean blood has pooled or can be merely an anatomical difference.
"I'm sure she's got the best doctors in the world looking at her," and if they are saying she has no neurological damage, "I would think it would be a pretty optimistic long-term outcome," Broderick said.
A review article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2005 describes the condition, which more often occurs in newborns or young people but can occur after a head injury. With modern treatment, more than 80 percent have a good neurologic outcome, the report says.
Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus. It was announced Dec. 13.
This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.
Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remained a question.