Open AccessPrevalence of Venous Thromboembolism in Patients With Secondary Polycythemia
Author(s) -
Omar Nadeem,
Jiang Gui,
Deborah L. Ornstein
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
clinical and applied thrombosis/hemostasis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.643
H-Index - 53
eISSN - 1938-2723
pISSN - 1076-0296
DOI - 10.1177/1076029612460425
Subject(s) - medicine , phlebotomy , copd , body mass index , risk factor , polycythemia vera , hematocrit , population , pulmonary embolism , gastroenterology , environmental health
To investigate an association between secondary polycythemia and venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk, we performed a case–control study to compare the prevalence of VTE in participants with secondary polycythemia due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD; N = 86) to that in age- and sex-matched controls with COPD without secondary polycythemia (N = 86). Although there was a significant difference in mean hematocrit between cases and controls (53.5% vs 43.6%, respectively; P < .005), we identified no difference in the number of total or idiopathic VTE events in the 2 groups. Patients with VTE, however, had a significantly higher body mass index than patients without VTE. Our findings suggest that secondary polycythemia alone may not be a significant risk factor for VTE but that VTE risk in this population may be related to known risk factors such as obesity. The role of phlebotomy for VTE risk reduction secondary polycythemia is therefore questionable.