Risk factors for venous thromboembolism in hospitalized patients with hematological malignancy: an analysis of the National Inpatient Sample, 2011–2015

Abstract

Hospitalized patients with hematological malignancy (HM) suffer an increased incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE). We sought to identify risk factors and rate of VTE in hospitalized patients with HM using National Inpatient Sample (NIS) for the years 2011 to 2015. We used ICD-9 codes to identify patients with HM as the primary diagnosis and VTE as a secondary diagnosis for hospitalization. The rate of VTE was highest in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (6.6%) followed by acute lymphocytic leukemia (6.1%) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (6.0%). The highest risk of VTE occurred among patients with HM receiving chemotherapy (OR 1.68; 95% CI 1.567–1.809) followed by infection such as pneumonia (OR 1.31; 95% CI 1.201–1.436) and sepsis (OR = 1.66; 95% CI = 1.524–1.621). Chemotherapy had the highest risk of developing VTE during hospitalization followed by sepsis and pneumonia. The identification of patients with HM most at risk for VTE could be used to design and test prophylactic strategy.

Keywords:

• Venous thromboembolism
• chemotherapy
• hematologic malignancy
• sepsis
• leukemia lymphoma
• multiple myeloma

Acknowledgments

Veli Bakalov and Amulya Yellala would wish to extend warm gratitude to Dr. Mario Castognaro and Dr. Tarun Sharma for strong support of scholarly activities in our residency program.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.