Profile of Venous Thromboembolism at the Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinoma

Although lung cancer incidence has increased during the last decades and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for approximately 80% of all lung tumors, few reports exist on the incidence of (venous thromboembolism) VTE in NSCLS. The purpose of this paper is to try to make definition of predictive parameters for onset of VTE at the patients with NSCLc. Clinical records of all NSCLC patients with VTE, treated at Clinic of Lung Diseases and TB, Clinical Centre University of Sarajevo, from 2006-2008 were retrospectively reviewed. In total there were 1563 patients with NSCLC. Results of the research: Among 1563 hospitalized patients with NSCLC during three years period, 92 (5.88%) were diagnosed with VTE and 0.58% with pulmonary embolism (PE). Mean age of our patients with VTE was 62.8 +/- 8.6 years (range 36-86), and male sex was 3.6 time more frequent than female. After calculating the correlation coefficient, it is evident that there is strong corrleation between performance status (PS) and the time of onset of VTE, and low correlation between the location and the time of the onset VTE, as well as low correlation between PS and the location of the VTE. Conclusion: As predictive parameters for onset of VTE at the patients with NSCLC we could include adenocarcinoma as the most frequent histology type of NSCLC at the cases of VTE (65.2%). Advanced cancer stage (84.8%) could be the significant predictor of appearance of VTE. The biggest percent of patients with VTE (44.56%) had this vascular event before the start of chemotherapy and during the first line treatment with chemotherapy. The most frequent location of VTE was on the veins of legs. Diseases of the heart were the most frequent comorbidity, in 39.13% of cases.