A recent study has found that there is an increased risk of developing recurring thrombosis for cancer patients who have a history of venous thromboembolism, or VTE.

The results of this study were recently presented during the 2020 ASH Meeting.

The Khorana Risk Score is used to predict the risk cancer patients have for developing VTE. It was already understood that VTE increases risk for experiencing recurrent thrombosis. Experiencing VTE also is associated with an increased risk for experiencing cancer-associated VTE.

What is missing is that having a history of VTE is not currently incorporated into the risk score.

Recurrence of VTE in cancer patients is an area that needs further examination, and these researchers took the first step.

The Study

This study was retrospective. It included 4,314,260 patients, 144,100 of which had experienced VTE at least a year prior to their diagnosis with cancer. The data was collected from a database that spans over 300 hospitals across the United States.

The researchers documented all patients who experienced a second episode of VTE within 180 days of their diagnosis with cancer.

The primary endpoint of the investigation was cancer-associated VTE (CVTE) occurring in patients who had a history with VTE.

In total, 4.74% of all of the participants in the trial experienced CVTE. If you had a history of VTE, your risk to experience CVTE was 10 times that of those who had no history.

Independent factors of CVTE which were documented were-

• History of VTE
• BMI
• Hemoglobin
• White blood cells
• Platelets

The team also found that risk of CVTE for those with a history of VTE is highest within the first month following diagnosis. They suspect this is due to the cancer treatments or surgeries.

Ultimately, this study shows that having previously experienced VTE needs to be a factor that is considered in addition to the Khorana score, especially if the score is low.

Further, it is clear that additional research on the prevalence of VTE its needed.   

You can read the full details of this investigation here.