THROMBOSIS AND HEMOSTASIS Prediction of venous thromboembolism in cancer patients

(VTE) is increased in cancer patients. To improve prediction of VTE in cancer patients, we performed a prospective and observational cohort study of pa-tients with newly diagnosed cancer or progression of disease after remission. A previously developed risk scoring model for prediction of VTE that in-cluded clinical (tumor entity and body mass index) and laboratory (hemoglo-bin level and thrombocyte and leuko-cyte count) parameters was expanded by incorporating 2 biomarkers, soluble P-selectin, and D-Dimer. Of 819 patients 61 (7.4%) experienced VTE during a median follow-up of 656 days. The cumu-lative VTE probability in the original risk model after 6 months was 17.7 % in patients with the highest risk score (> 3, n 93), 9.6 % in those with score 2 (n 221), 3.8 % in those with score 1 (n 229), and 1.5 % in those with score 0 (n 276). In the expanded risk model, the cumulative VTE probability after 6 months in patients with the highest score (> 5, n 30) was 35.0 % and 10.3% in those with an intermediate score (score 3, n 130) as opposed to only 1.0 % in patients with score 0 (n 200); the hazard ratio of patients with the highest compared with those with the lowest score was 25.9 (8.0-84.6). Clini-cal and standard laboratory parameters with addition of biomarkers enable pre-diction of VTE and allow identification of cancer patients at high or low risk of VTE. (Blood. 2010;116(24):5377-5382