As someone who has been permanently confined to a wheelchair for 33 years I cannot help but be slightly amused at discussions concerning DVT. Perhaps it should be re-named “Airline Litigation Disease” in recognition of its true nature.

A profoundly mobility disabled individual (of which there are literally millions around the world) will spend upwards of 15 hours of every waking day in their lives seated in one position. They will not be able to engage in those novel airline DVT exercises, most cannot afford physiotherapy, most will partake in the usual unhealthy diet, most will not wear stockings. On the basis of the current DVT scare mongering these people should all be dead within weeks of becoming wheelchair based. Yet amazingly, in all my years of involvement in the disabled community, I have never heard of any mobility disabled person either suffering a DVT “attack” or having died from a DVT.

No-one has ever managed to fully explain to me why people who spend more than 2/3rds of every single day locked into a wheelchair do not suffer from DVTs, and able-bodied people who sit in front of their televisions each evening do not suffer from DVTs, yet able-bodied people who get onto an aeroplane fear they will suffer a DVT.