Legs get some Altitude to Prevent Clots; Seat Redesign may Reduce Deep Vein Thrombosis

When Arnold Jonas asked Virgin Atlantic airlines three years ago to consider using a seat he invented to prevent blood clots from forming in passengers' legs, company officials in London told him to have the seat tested by scientists.

Now Jonas is back with a published study showing that his seat helps keep blood from pooling in the legs, creating a simple solution to a sometimes deadly problem. And the California man's seat is one of several options the airline says it is considering to combat the in-flight health risk.

"This is a new way to think about how passengers sit in the aircraft," says Jonas, of Laguna Woods, Calif.

Doctors say deep vein thrombosis -- in which blood collects in the legs, creating clots that can then travel to the heart, lungs and other organs -- kills more than 200,000 people in the USA each year.

Patients who have surgery are at risk of developing DVT. After the operation, they are given blood-thinning drugs or have inflatable devices wrapped around their lower legs to avoid blood clots.

On long airline flights, which studies have shown to increase the DVT risk, no such help is available.

Warnings are now common on aircraft, and airlines provide instructions to passengers on how to prevent blood clots from forming.

Clots can form when the feet are flat on the floor of the aircraft for long periods of time. People who have certain risk factors, from fighting cancer to using oral contraceptives, are particularly vulnerable to the formation of clots.

The solution Jonas came up with after taking many trips between California and Israel is simple: Let passengers raise a cushion on the front of their airline seat that allows the legs to dangle, swinging the feet freely and comfortably in flight.

"To increase circulation, you need very little movement," he says.

His seat requires no extra leg room, and those who have tried it say it is comfortable. Jonas says the chair is especially good for tall people. "People with long legs have serious problems in airlines," Jonas says. "This gives them support under the knee."

With more people flying longer flights -- and the next generation of jumbo jets designed to stay aloft for 15 hours -- one of the doctors who studied the new seat hopes that airlines will do more to prevent blood clots in passengers.

"I'm not saying this is the only way to do it," says Harry Abramowitz of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, one of the authors of the study in the Annals of Vascular Surgery. "There may be a million ways to change the seat so that your feet don't get planted on the ground."

The study found that after five hours in the seat, 23 of 25 volunteers had less blood pooling in their legs than when they spent the same time in a traditional seat.

And despite airline warnings and suggestions to keep the legs moving, Abramowitz says, passengers are still getting blood clots. "You can wiggle your legs up and down on your tiptoes," he says, "but people don't do that."

He'd like to see an airline put some of the seats -- called NewSit -- next to windows on one side of one aircraft so that passengers could be studied after long flights.

If those in the NewSit seats had lower rates of DVT markers than those who sat in traditional seats, the airline would know if the seats are worth the extra $600 and 4pounds of added weight, which raises fuel costs.

"It would be a very, very important step forward for a serious problem," Abramowitz says. "You have to have something which is going to be accepted by the population, which is comfortable for them, which is going to decrease the probability of this problem."

Virgin Atlantic says it is too early to know whether any of several new designs it is considering will prove the most effective. A spokeswoman says the airline considers the technology to be in its infancy.

Russell Rayman, executive director of the Aerospace Medical Association, which works with airlines on medical problems, doubts U.S. airlines would test the seat.

"They are not in the research and development field," he says. "The airlines are making a much better effort now to inform people" about the risks of deep vein thrombosis.

"I think they're doing their part."

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