Source: www.medpagetoday.com Author: Salynn Boyles, Contributing Writer, MedPage Today Clinically relevant blood clots are common in head and neck cancer patients following surgery, and routine chemoproprophylaxis is warranted in post-surgical patients hospitalized for more than 72 hours, a prospective study has found. When the researchers followed 100 high-risk cancer patients for 30 days following surgery, they found that 13% developed venous thromboembolism (VTE), including seven who had deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and one with pulmonary embolism (PE). A total of 14% of the patients received postoperative anticoagulation therapy, and their rate of bleeding complications was 30% compared with 5.6% in patients who did not receive the therapy (P=0.01), Daniel R. Clayburgh, MD, PhD, of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and colleagues wrote online Sept. 26 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. While the study was not powered to detect differences in risk factors among patients who did and did not develop VTEs, there was a trend in those with VTEs toward lower mean Karnofsky-Performance status scores (72 versus 79 in patients without them; P=0.09) and higher Caprini risk assessment scores (7.6 in VTE patients vs 6.9 in those who did not develop blood clots; P=0.09). These risk factors did not reach statistical significance. The VTE incidence reported by Clayburgh and colleagues was higher than has been suggested in retrospective studies of the general otolaryngology population, with one recent study finding an overall VTE rate of just 1.3%. The incidence is also higher than the OHSU research team's own [...]