J Thromb Haemost: Pulmonary embolism during autopsy for cancer patients

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a potentially fatal disease, but there is little data on the rate of fatal PE in cancer patients.
, researchers tried to estimate the proportion of cancer patients with PE at the time of the autopsy, according to a recent study published in Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, an authoritative journal of thrombosis and clotting diseases.
in this retrospective queue study, researchers retrieved autopsy reports from all cancer patients from the Dutch Pathology Registry (PALGA) and extracted data.
outcome of the study was PE found during an autopsy, defined as any obstructive pulmonary artery blood clot.
secondary outcome is venous thromboembolism, defined as thrombosis PE, deep vein thrombosis, visceral venous thrombosis, or intravenous thrombosis in the neck.
9,571 cancer patients were included in the study.
one or more PE events were observed in 1191 cases (12.4%; 95% CI was 11.8-13.1), of which 1074 cases (90.2%) were thromboembolism, 168 cases (14.1%) were tumor embolism, 9 cases (0.8%) were septic embolism, 7 cases (0.6%) were adipose tissue embolism, and 3 cases (0.3%) were bone marrow embolism.
642 (66.7 per cent) of PE patients identified as causes of death in autopsy reports were considered PE-related, accounting for 6.7 per cent of the total number of studies.
1223 patients showed venous thrombosis (12.8%; 95% CI was not 12.1-13.5).
shows that the proportion of PE in cancer patients' autopsies is quite large.
that although the study population does not represent the overall cancer population, this suggests that PE is an important complication for cancer patients.