Improvement in Prediction of Blood Clots in Cancer Patients

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — For cancer
patients, who have an increased risk of developing venous
thromboembolism (VTE) due to a hyperactive blood coagulation
system, there is now an enhanced risk model to predict their chance
of developing blood clots, according to a recent
study published today in Blood, the journal of the
American Society of Hematology. VTE, the formation of blood clots
in the veins, develops in up to 20 percent of cancer patients and
is one of the leading causes of death among this patient
population. Patients with hematologic malignancies (blood cancers),
particularly those with lymphoma and multiple myeloma, have
relatively high rates of VTE—results from this study found
that 7.2 percent of lymphoma patients and 7.4 percent of the total
study population developed VTE, compared to an estimated general
population incidence rate of .001 percent(1)

“Because the risk of VTE is not equal in all cancer patients and
anticoagulation in cancer patients results in a higher risk of
bleeding complications, categorizing cancer patients according to
their VTE risk is important,” said Ingrid Pabinger, MD, professor
at the Medical University of Vienna and lead author of the study.
Patients with high risk of VTE may benefit from routine
thrombophrophylaxis, preventive treatment for blood clotting, while
low-risk patients tend to have a higher bleeding risk and may not
be the best candidates for routine anticoagulation treatments.

Although there is a current risk prediction model for VTE in
cancer patients, which includes factors such as site of cancer,
body mass index, platelet and leukocyte counts, and hemoglobin
level—all known to increase the risk of cancer-associated
VTE—the new model also incorporates two new biomarkers,
soluble P-selectin (sP-selectin) and D-dimer, to further stratify
patients in

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