Study Warns of Blood Clot Risk When Flying While on Birth Control Pill

NEW YORK, December 10, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) –  The medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine, reports a study today indicating that women who use birth control pills greatly increase their risk of potentially life threatening blood clots when they travel by air.  The study entitled, Risk of Venous Thromboembolism After Air Travel: Interaction With Thrombophilia and Oral Contraceptives,” says that women who are on oral contraceptive while in flight are fourteen times more likely to develop venous thromboembolism – blood clots that travel through the veins and can block the chambers of the heart, or block off part of the lungs, which may be fatal.  The study noted that the pill, by itself, increases the likelihood of blood clots four times and long-flights, by themselves, double the risk of the disease.  However, when pill usage and long-flights are combined there is a startling fourteen-fold increased risk of the dangerous blood clots.  The findings have prompted calls for warnings in airports.  “Warning signs should be posted in every airport,” said American Life League president Judie Brown. “But unbelievably, the news that women on the birth control pill are at increased risk for potentially deadly blood clots on long airline flights is being ignored. The Federal Aviation Administration should be ordered to disclose this important information to all female passengers. It could save lives.”  Brown told LifeSite, “The birth control pill is simply bad medicine, regardless of how you look at it. And now we learn that from 35,000 feet, the view is even worse.”  See the abstract of the study in the journal:  https://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/163/22/2771