Incidence and diagnostic significance of paraneoplastic thromboembolism disorders. A survey from a community hospital.
The incidence of paraneoplastic thromboembolic disorders (PTD) at first presentation of cancer and its diagnostic significance as a cancer marker are unknown. Fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-seven patients were admitted to the department of medicine during the period 1978-1987. Nine amongst those patients had thromboembolic disorders (TE) as the initial clinical disturbance. In another 2 patients TE was the first sign of recurrence in apparently cured cancer. PTD patients were elderly (median age 70 years), the clinical variants of PTD included solitary venous thrombosis in 3, migratory thrombophlebitis in 4, pulmonary TE in 1, arterial occlusion in 2, and associated arterial and venous occlusion in 1 case. PTD antedated the diagnosis of neoplasia by 3-180 days (median 21 days). Analysis of the impact of TE on the initiation of search for occult malignancy (PTD-cancer relevance) and on patient survival (PTD-cancer prognosis) demonstrated high PTD-cancer relevance scores in 9 among 11 cases, but favorable PTD-cancer prognosis scores in only 3 cases. This is consistent with the significance of TE for the earlier diagnosis of a, usually, disseminated cancer. The present study demonstrated a higher than usually stated association of TE with occult cancer (4.6%). It differs from recent studies by including not only venous thrombosis, but a variety of venous and arterial TE disorders as well. By studying the population from a community hospital, we believe that these data would reflect the situation in the general population at large. In this way our study differs from those of tertiary care hospitals in that our patients were not preselected.
Department of Medicine "A", Haifa Medical Center (Rothschild), Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
J E
JE
Naschitz
D
D
Yeshurun
J
J
Abrahamson
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D010257:Paraneoplastic Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D011379:Prognosis; D013923:Thromboembolism / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D013997:Time Factors