title: Prevalence of venous thromboembolism in patients with secondary polycythemia.
abstract: To investigate an association between secondary polycythemia and venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk, we performed a case-control study to compare the prevalence of VTE in participants with secondary polycythemia due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; N = 86) to that in age- and sex-matched controls with COPD without secondary polycythemia (N = 86). Although there was a significant difference in mean hematocrit between cases and controls (53.5% vs 43.6%, respectively; P < .005), we identified no difference in the number of total or idiopathic VTE events in the 2 groups. Patients with VTE, however, had a significantly higher body mass index than patients without VTE. Our findings suggest that secondary polycythemia alone may not be a significant risk factor for VTE but that VTE risk in this population may be related to known risk factors such as obesity. The role of phlebotomy for VTE risk reduction secondary polycythemia is therefore questionable.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Lebanon, NH, USA. onadeem7@gmail.com
authors.forename: Omar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Nadeem
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gui
authors.forename: Deborah L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Ornstein
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009513:New Hampshire / Q000453:epidemiology; D011086:Polycythemia / Q000097:blood / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D054556:Venous Thromboembolism / Q000097:blood / Q000453:epidemiology*