Trends of cancer-associated venous thromboembolism (VTE) in the United States (2005–2014)

Abstract

IntroductionCancer patients are prone to higher risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) compared to the general population. However, the estimated incidence of cancer-associated VTE varied among the studies. The primary objective of this study was to determine the national annual incidence and examine the trend of cancer-associated VTE in the US over the years from 2005 to 2014. MethodsA retrospective population based study was conducted using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The study included all noninstitutionalized US adults aged ≥18 years who had a final person-weight > 0 to be representative of the national population. Simple linear regression (SLR) and Mann-Kendall (MK) tests were used to examine the trend of cancer-associated VTE over the years. ResultsOn average, there were 15,570,000 adult persons living with a cancer condition every year. Female represented 53.8% of the study population, and the mean of age was 63.5 years. The overall annual incidence of cancer-associated VTE varied between 1.80 and 0.72% over the years, with an overall average of 1.18%. The study found a non-significant downward trend in the incidence of cancer-associated VTE over the years. Patients who had cancer-associated VTE were significantly older than patients without VTE (mean 68.64 vs. 62.68 years, p < .0001). ConclusionThe study found cancer patients continued to have the risk of VTE over the years. The non-significant downward trend in cancer-associated VTE suggests that health care practitioners are heading in the right direction, but enhanced preventative care is needed to avoid further incidents of cancer-associated VTE.