Cancer-associated venous thromboembolism and its impact on survival in the ONCOTHROMB12-01 cohort study

Cancer patients are at increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), representing one of the main causes of death. In this paper, we used the ONCOTHROMB12-01 study cohort for the analysis of 18-month overall survival (OS) and cancer-associated venous thrombosis (CAT) cumulative incidence. The OS is described for patients with and without CAT across age, sex, cancer type, stage and presence of recurrent VTE using the Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test. Moreover, a Cox regression model with stepwise feature selection is trained to identify predictors of prognosis. Results show an 18-month CAT cumulative incidence of 16.5 % (CI 13.1–21.0 %) and a median OS for patients with CAT of 9.1 months (CI 5.9–12.5). Furthermore, CAT is associated with shorter survival in lung, colorectal and pancreatic cancer in advanced stages, regardless of age and sex; VTE recurrence also reduces survival significantly. The model found ECOG performance status of 2, cancer type, metastatic stage, VTE, mucinous histology and complete tumor resection as meaningful predictors; the latter being the only protective factor. In conclusion, the diagnosis of CAT has a profound impact on OS in the ONCOTHROMB12-01 study regardless of the clinical characteristics of patients.