Evaluation of risk factors and assessment models for predicting venous thromboembolism in lung cancer patients

The aim of the study was to investigate the prognostic significance of selected risk assessment models (RAMs) for predicting venous thromboembolism (VTE) events in patients undergoing outpatient chemotherapy for lung cancer. We evaluated the following VTE-risk assessment tools: Khorana risk score (KRS), PROTECHT score, CONKO score and COMPASS-cancer-associated thrombosis score (COMPASS-CAT). Retrospective analyses were performed on 118 patients with lung cancer, 20 of whom developed VTE with a median of 2.5 months from diagnosis. Patients receiving gemcitabine-based regimen (25%), patients with a history of atrial fibrillation (AF) and patients with chronic kidney disease developed VTE more often than other patients. In the multivariate analysis, high COMPASS-CAT score (OR 8.73; 95% CI 1.01–75.22, P = 0.049), gemcitabine chemotherapy (OR 3.37; 95% CI 1.09–10.39, P = 0.035) and AF (OR 7.19; 95% CI 1.89–27.33, P = 0.004) were all significantly associated with VTE development. VTE occurred in; 13% (n = 2) of the KRS high-risk group, 17.7% (n = 11) of the PROTECHT high-risk group, 15% (n = 4) of the CONKO high-risk group and 23.8% (n = 20) of the COMPASS-CAT high-risk group (n = 84). Only the COMPASS-CAT score was able to identify 100% of patients who developed VTE, and best discriminated between patients with high and low risk of VTE development (C statistic 0.89). The ROC analysis indicated a cutoff value of 11 points (95% CI 0.821–0.962) for COMPASS-CAT for VTE development in patients with lung cancer. In conclusion, in our study of all the VTE–RAMs analyzed, the COMPASS-CAT model was the most accurate predictor of VTE development in patients with lung cancer.