Symptomatic venous thromboembolism associated with peripherally inserted central catheters predicts a worse survival in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: results of a large cohort, propensity score–matched analysis

BACKGROUND: Despite increasing use, symptomatic venous thromboembolism (VTE) associated with peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) is a common complication in nonmetastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients. METHODS: A total of 3012 nonmetastatic NPC patients were enrolled in this retrospective study, and we applied Cox regression and log-rank tests to assess the association between PICC-VTE and survival using the propensity score method (PSM) to adjust for gender, age, radiotherapy technique, tumor stage, node stage, UICC clinical stage and pre-treatment EBV DNA. RESULTS: 217 patients developed PICC-VTE, with an incidence of 7.20%. PSM identified 213 patients in the cohort with VTE and 852 in that without. Patients who developed PICC-VTE had a shorter 5-year PFS (77.5% vs 87.6%, p < 0.001), DMFS (85.0% vs 91.2%, p < 0.001), LRRFS (93.9% vs 97.7%, p < 0.001) and OS (85.4% vs 87.6%, p < 0.001). Subgroup analyses indicated that no significant survival difference was found between PICC-related superficial venous thrombosis and deep vein thrombosis, nor did different anticoagulant treatment methods. CONCLUSIONS: PICC-VTE was associated with a worse survival outcome in nonmetastatic NPC patients. A prospective randomized clinical trial is required to verify the results. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-018-5213-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.