The Risk of Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) among Cancer Patients by Tumor Site: A Population-Based Study.

Active cancer is an independent VTE risk factor (overall 6- to 9-fold increased risk) and accounts for almost 20% of all VTE in the community, but which cancer patients are at risk for VTE is largely unknown. Reportedly, VTE risk varies by tumor site, and cancer of the ovary, pancreas, colon, stomach, lung, prostate, and kidney convey particularly high VTE risk.

Objective: To estimate VTE risk by tumor site.

Methods: We enumerated observed cancers by tumor site for Olmsted County, MN active cancer patients with incident VTE over the seven-year period, 1991–1997 (n=152). We used 1991–1997 State Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data for Iowa to estimate the expected age-specific prevalence of cancer by tumor site in Olmsted County. VTE risk ratios (RR) for each tumor site were estimated by dividing the observed number of cancers by the expected number (calculated as the product of the SEER prevalence and the number of incident VTE cases in the age stratum).

Results: For our population of 1991–1997 VTE cases, all tumor sites had RR > 5.0 (range 5.2 to 37.3, all p-values<0.05). Compared to published overall VTE odds ratios of 6–9 for active cancer compared to no cancer, the RR for some tumor sites were particularly increased. A Chi-squared test of heterogeneity of the RR across sites was highly significant (p-value<0.001). Three rare cancer sites - pancreatic cancer, lymphoma, and brain cancer - had unusually high RR (all RR>25). The high number of VTE cases with lymphoma was not due to catheter-related arm vein thrombosis. Liver, leukemia, other gastrointestinal (esophagus, small intestine, gallbladder, other biliary) and other gynecologic (primarily cervical) cancers had over twice the baseline risk (i.e., RR>17.0). On the other hand, the RR for many common cancers (breast, colorectal, ovary, lung, prostate) were essentially the same as the overall baseline risk (all had 9.5<RR<12.0).

Conclusions: In contrast to previous reports, pancreas, lymphoma, brain, liver, leukemia, other gastrointestinal, and other gynecologic cancers have the highest VTE risk. Prior estimates of VTE risk by tumor site may have been biased by studies of prevalent cancers among patients hospitalized in tertiary care centers.