Introduction: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is frequent in advanced pancreatic cancer (APC). Recent studies demonstrated that the Khorana score - an established risk stratification tool for VTE in cancer - performs poorly in identifying pancreatic cancer patients at high risk for VTE.
Materials And Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study in order to define incidence, treatment and outcome of VTE as well as the performance of VTE risk stratification tools (Khorana score, CONKO score and aPTT ratio) in a "real life" clinical cohort of APC patients undergoing palliative chemotherapy.
A recently published post-hoc analysis of a trial using high-dose antithrombin (AT) in septic patients (KyberSept) revealed significant reduction of lethality when no concomitant heparin was administered, whereas patients with the combination of heparin and AT did not benefit in terms of survival. Therefore, it seems feasible to study the capability of AT in prevention of microvascular thrombus formation to avoid concomitant application of heparin and AT. Using fluorescence microscopy and a light/dye-injury mouse ear model, the kinetics of thrombus formation were analyzed quantitatively in vivo upon single iv bolus of saline (control), heparin (100 IU/kg), hirudin (1 mg/kg) or AT (25, 50, 100 or 250 IU/kg) (N = 7 animals per group each).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Veno-occlusive disease (VOD) is one of the most serious complications following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and is associated with a high mortality. We conducted a large trial in order to investigate the value of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) plasma antigen levels in VOD patients as PAI-1 has been described as a possible diagnostic marker of VOD.
Methods: In all, 350 stem cell recipients were included in our study.