Intermediate risk pulmonary embolism concomitant with or without lung cancer: a wide spectrum of features

ABSTRACT

Objectives

We aimed to investigate the differences in clinical features between pulmonary embolism (PE) patients concomitant with lung cancer and without lung cancer (LC) and gain further understanding of the impact of lung cancer on pulmonary embolism.

Methods

This retrospective study sampled 114 patients diagnosed with pulmonary embolism from January 2017 to April 2021 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. The patients were categorized into the LC group (n = 22) or non-LC group (n = 92). Myocardial injury, coagulation and blood cell parameters, along with imaging findings, were analyzed for the two groups. The primary outcome measure was the 90-day mortality.

Results

Of the 114 patients with pulmonary embolism in the present study, the 90 intermediate-risk patients were enrolled for further investigations. Compared to the non-LC group, patients in the LC group had milder myocardial injury, more severe coagulation function disorder, a higher incidence of central PE and a smaller change in diameter of the main pulmonary artery. We found that the occurrence of pericardial effusion created the risk of lung cancer in patients with pulmonary embolism, but there was no increase in the 90-day mortality for non-LC group versus LC group.

Conclusion

Intermediate risk PE patients concomitant with lung cancer seem to be more likely to present specific clinical features, accordingly, clinicians must pay great attention to PE patients concomitant with lung cancer and implement effective treatments to simultaneously manage the two conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Pulmonary embolism
• Lung cancer
• Myocardial injury
• Pericardial effusion
• Pulmonary artery

Abbreviations

Table

Ethics approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University (NO.186 in 2021).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Authors’ contributions

XYZ and BLZ conducted the acquisition of data. YJJ and YFJ analyzed data and prepared the manuscript. CC designed the study and corrected the manuscript.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Additional information

Funding

This study was mainly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) grant 81672280 (to CC), Natural Science Foundation of Suzhou City grant SYS2018042 (to CC), Six Talent Peaks Project in Jiangsu Province WSN-101 (to CC), Provincial Health Committee grant LGY2019083 (to CC).