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

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer 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. Methods: A 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. Results: On 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). Conclusion: The 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.