The ICU-venous thromboembolism score and tumor grade can predict inhospital venous thromboembolism occurrence in critical patients with tumors

Abstract

Background Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a threat to the prognosis of tumor patients, especially for critically ill patients. No uniform standard model of VTE risk for critically ill patients with tumors was formatted by now. We thus analyzed risk factors of VTE from the perspectives of patient, tumor, and treatment and assessed the predictive value of the ICU-VTE score, which consisted of six independent risk factors (central venous catheterization, 5 points; immobilization ≥ 4 days, 4 points; prior VTE, 4 points; mechanical ventilation, 2 points; lowest hemoglobin during hospitalization ≥ 90 g/L, 2 points; and baseline platelet count > 250,000/μL, 1 points). Methods We evaluated the data of tumor patients admitted to the intensive care unit of the Peking University Cancer Hospital between November 2011 and January 2022; 560 cases who received VTE-related screening during hospitalization were chosen for this retrospective study. Results The inhospital VTE occurrence rate in our cohort was 55.7% (312/560), with a median interval from ICU admission to VTE diagnosis of 8.0 days. After the multivariate logistic regression analysis, several factors were proved to be significantly associated with inhospital VTE: age ≥ 65 years, high tumor grade (G3–4), medical diseases, fresh frozen plasma transfusion, and anticoagulant prophylaxis. The medium-high risk group according to the ICU-VTE score was positively correlated with VTE when compared with the low-risk group (9–18 points vs. 0–8 points; OR, 3.13; 95% CI, 2.01–4.85, P < 0.001). The AUC of the ICU-VTE scores according to the ROC curve was 0.714 (95% CI, 0.67–0.75, P < 0.001). Conclusions The ICU-VTE score, as well as tumor grade, might assist in the assessment of inhospital VTE risk for critically ill patients with tumors. The predictive accuracy might be improved when combining two of them; further follow-up researches are needed to confirm it.

The impact of gender differences on the clinical characteristics of critically ill patients with venous thromboembolism: A retrospective, observational study

“…In addition to these prophylactic measures, therapeutic anticoagulation remains a fundamental strategy for treating VTE. [ 40 ] Studies suggest that continuous anticoagulation in patients with VTE yields better clinical outcomes, [ 41 ] low-molecular-weight heparins (LMWHs) have been used extensively to prevent and treat VTE, [ 42 , 43 ] however, in the context of certain drugs and liver diseases, LMWHs may increase the risk of thromboembolism or overtreatment [ 44 ] and potentially cause major bleeding. [ 45 ] Consequently, numerous studies are investigating alternative preventive and therapeutic modalities for VTE.…”