Symptoms and Complications
Blood clots that result in a heart attack may cause chest pain (angina) that usually starts in the center of the chest, and moves to the jaw, the back, the left arm, or occasionally the right arm. Less commonly, the pain may be felt in the abdomen. Heart attack pain is usually severe but not always. Some people have "silent heart attacks" without any symptoms. Some people have reported feeling a sense of impending doom as a heart attack comes on. There's tightness and often a pounding in the chest. The heart may speed up and beat irregularly. Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, nausea or vomiting, fainting, or collapse may also occur. Women may experience slightly different heart attack symptoms than men. Women are more likely than men to have nausea, and less likely to have sweating as a symptom of a heart attack. Women may not feel the chest pain as distinctly as men. The most common places for women's chest pain to spread to are the neck, jaw, or back.
Blood clots that result in a stroke usually cause symptoms on the opposite side of the body from where they form in the brain. This may result in loss of feeling on one side of the face, arm, or leg, or may result in blindness. If the left side of the brain is affected, speech problems can occur. Affected people may be unable to speak or to understand spoken words. Other symptoms of stroke include confusion, a severe headache, or sudden loss of coordination or balance.
Signs of stroke should not be ignored, however brief or seemingly insignificant. Even if symptoms only last a few minutes and then vanish completely, it is important to seek medical attention right away.
Inflammation in superficial or surface veins - such as those used to insert intravenous (IV) lines in the arm or to draw blood - produces pain and discomfort but it isn't considered serious. Blood clots that form in superficial veins rarely break loose and travel in the blood to cause blockage (thromboembolism) and complications in organs such as the lungs.
In the case of DVT, a blood clot in the leg may cause pain, swelling, redness and increased warmth. The leg may ache when standing. This usually occurs in one leg only.
While many people with DVT have no signs or symptoms, the classic symptoms are:
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firm swelling
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pain or tenderness over a vein
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sharp pain when the foot is flexed upwards
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redness
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warm sensation over the affected area
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dull, aching tightness in the calf, especially with walking
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dilation (widening) of the surface veins of the leg
DVT can lead to serious complications. A blood clot that formed in deeper, larger veins, such as those of the legs, abdomen, and pelvis, can break away and become a traveling blood clot, or embolus. The embolus can travel and lodge in the lung, a condition called pulmonary embolism.
Because a clot in a deep vein may not cause symptoms early on, the first sign may occur when the clot has broken loose and traveled to the lung. Symptoms of a pulmonary (lung) embolism are breathlessness, chest pain, and bloody sputum. If you have any of these symptoms, get emergency medical care right away.