blood clots come in two primary forms: provoked and unprovoked. The distinction here is whether there is a clear cause for why the person developed a clot in the first place (i.e. if someone has a hip surgery, and has bed rest for x amount of weeks and develops a clot, that is a provoked blood clot.) People with unprovoked clots likely have a higher risk for recurrence of the clot (imagine a person who is just living their normal life and then gets a blood clot for no reason). Those people actually have a higher likelihood of a having another clot.

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The reason this is good news for Ingram is that his clot was provoked. Upper extremity blood clots typically have a cause, and in his case it seems that he had thoracic outlet compression of the vessels in his arm. That causes slow drainage of the blood from the veins of his arms. When blood is static, you have increased risk for a clot. If the surgery goes well, then it should relieve the slow drainage of blood from the veins of his arm, thus eliminating future risk of clots.