Patients taking Xeljanz to treat rheumatoid arthritis or ulcerative colitis should be aware of the signs of blood clots in lungs.

What Are Blood Clots in Lungs?

A blood clot in the lung also is known as a pulmonary embolism, which usually occurs after a blood clot has traveled to the lungs from the legs. When a blood clot forms in the leg, the condition is known as deep vein thrombosis.

Sometimes blockages in the arteries in the lungs are caused by other things, such as fat from the bone marrow of a broken long bone, collagen, air bubbles or portions of a tumor that have broken away.

What Causes Blood Clots to Form?

Most blood clots occur because a patient has been confined to bed rest for an extended period of time. Surgery, a heart attack, a leg fracture, or serious illness increases the patient’s risk of a blood clot because the blood flow slows and can pool in the legs, forming a clot.

People who travel for long excursions that involve sitting in a car or on a plane in one position can cause them to experience blood clots, too. Any time the blood is allowed to pool in the legs, the risks increase.

What Are Common Risk Factors?

People who smoke also are at increased risk of suffering from blood clots. Nicotine causes an increased clotting tendency and encourages hardening of the arteries, which is the build-up of plaque on the insides of the arterial walls.

Being overweight, taking birth control pills and being pregnant can increase the risks of blood clots, too.

Anyone already suffering from heart disease has an increased risk of developing blood clots.

Cancer patients also may experience blood clots because chemotherapy drugs can increase the chances of developing blood clots. Metastasizing cancers such as pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancers make a patient more prone to blood clots. And anyone with a family history of breast cancer who takes tamoxifen or raloxifene has a higher than average risk, too.

The FDA recently issued a warning to patients with rheumatoid arthritis who take 10mg of Xeljanz (tofacitinib) twice a day have an increased risk of blood clots, but the reason is not clear.

“Health care professionals should follow the recommendation in the tofacitinib prescribing information for the specific condition they are treating,” said the FDA regarding Xeljanz prescriptions.

What Are the Symptoms of a Pulmonary Embolism?

The symptoms vary among patients, but common signs include a sudden onset of shortness of breath that worsens with exertion. Many patients mistake a pulmonary embolism for a heart attack because the pain can worsen with breathing deeply, coughing, eating or bending over. Plus, the pain does not go away completely with rest.

Some patients who have blood clots in the lungs will cough up bloody or blood-streaked phlegm.

Other symptoms can include swelling in the calf of the leg, clammy skin, fever, unusual sweating, rapid heartbeat or dizziness.

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