Table 1.

Exclusion criteria

Exclusion criteria	Example or explanation
No living human subjects	e.g. mice model
Focus on wrong procedure	e.g. unicompartmental knee replace-ment
Focus on risk factors for other complications	e.g. limb swelling
Focus on other thrombo-related factors	e.g. bleeding or blood transfusion
Focus on fat embolism	e.g. fat embolism after femoral head resection
Have not mentioned any risk factor	e.g. prevelance studied alone
Not primary clinical research	e.g. literature review or guidline
Level III prognostic study	e.g. case–control
Level IV prognostic study	e.g. case series
Level V prognostic study	e.g. expert opinion
Diagnostic study	e.g. spiral CT for the detection of pulmonary embolism
Economic and decision analyses	e.g. cost-effectiveness of extended-duration thromboprophylaxis after THA
Indispensable data missing or not available	e.g. no p-value
Article could not be retrieved	e.g. not available in electronic or print archives
Duplicate publication	e.g. Similar title, sample size ,and outcome data