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  • Home > Blog > Treatment News > Mesothelioma Patients Should be Aware of Potential Risk of Developing Blood Clots
Posted on Thursday, Sep 22, 2011

Mesothelioma Patients Should be Aware of Potential Risk of Developing Blood Clots

Pleural mesothelioma is an aggressive, rare cancer of the lining of the lungs that requires an equally aggressive treatment regimen to improve the survival time for patients.  Chemotherapy is considered the most effective single modality for the treatment of the disease and is likely to be the most commonly deployed treatment as well.  Now, Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that a serious side effect of chemotherapy may be the formation of blood clots.

The Duke researchers found that developing a blood clot, or venous thromboembolism (VTE), is more common among cancer patients than doctors realize.   In fact, they found that as many as one in five cancer patients risk developing a VTE within a year of receiving cancer treatments.  Not only do blood clots pose serious health complications requiring hospitalization, but they also result in significantly higher health care costs.  According to the study, the average increase in costs was close to $35,000 over patients without blood clots.

The researchers analyzed more than 30,000 cancer patients, focusing on lung, pancreatic, stomach, colon, rectum, bladder, and ovarian cancers, who began chemotherapy during a four-year period ending in 2008.

They found that the risk of developing a VTE within 3.5 months of starting treatment depended on the type of cancer. Pancreatic cancer had the highest risk, at 11.9 percent, with lung and stomach cancer patients having an 8.5 percent risk, while bladder cancer patients carried the lowest risk at 4.8 percent. 

The researchers also found that after a year the risk of developing a VTE nearly doubled across all types of cancers analyzed.  The risk among lung cancer patients increased to 14.8 percent.

In up to 2 percent of cases blood clots proved deadly.

The lead author of the study, Gary H. Lyman, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and director of the Comparative Effectiveness and Outcomes Research Program at Duke, said they “don’t fully understand why VTEs form during cancer treatment,” but they believe blood clotting agents released by tumors, side effects of chemotherapy, and pre-existing health conditions such as obesity and anemia may contribute.

Lyman added that knowing which patients are at the highest risk of developing blood clots could lead to better preventive treatments.

Mesothelioma, an unusual form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure, is responsible for approximately 3,000 new cases each year in the United States.   The cancer presents as a diffuse malignancy that blurs the boundaries between malignant tissue and healthy tissue.  Lung cancer, however, is characterized by individual tumor masses with clear boundaries.   Even with these differences between the two pulmonary cancers, the treatments are often very similar.

The Duke University study will be reported September 26 at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm.