Article
Glioblastoma patients suffer more often from thrombembolic complications than do patients with other common brain tumours
Glioblastom-Patienten erleiden häufiger Thrombosen oder Embolien als andere Hirntumorpatienten
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Published: | May 8, 2006 |
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Objective: Malignant tumours are known for their propensity to cause thrombembolic events. We want to know, whether patients with glioblastoma get more often thromboembolia than other brain tumour patients.
Methods: 318 brain tumour patients that were treated surgically from 1996 to 2005 were included. These were reinvestigated with special respect to the occurrence of thromboembolia. SPSS 13.0 was used for statistics.
Results: 150 patients were women, 168 were men. 92 patients suffered from brain metastasis, 84 from glioblastoma multiforme, 61 from meningioma, 34 from low-grade glioma, 39 from anaplastic glioma, and 8 from primary CNS lymphoma. Increased intracranial pressure was present in 136 patients. 124 patients suffered from tumour-associated epilepsy. 111 patients showed a hemiparesis. Preoperative Karnofsky index was 74.2 (±0.7) and did not change postoperatively, 73.0 (±0.6). 131 patients were solely operated, 8 had surgery followed by chemotherapy, and 110 received radiotherapy after operation. Finally, 68 patients were treated by operation, radio- and chemotherapy. 132 patients are living right now after their therapy. Of the dead patients, the mean total survival time was 33.2 (±2.2) months or 942.2 (±47.4) days in the whole population. 27 patients out of all 318 suffered from thrombembolic events. 11 of these had a glioblastoma multiforme. This means a probability of about 12% for a glioblastoma patient to get thromboembolia. 7 patients with thromboembolia had a meningioma and 6 had brain metastasis. With respect to the total amount of glioblastoma patients, they suffered more often from thrombembolic events than did other brain tumour patients. There was no significant abnormality of coagulation factors or coagulation system-associated factors in the blood, except for d-dimers.
Conclusions: Glioblastoma patients suffer more often from thrombembolic events than all other brain tumour patients. Coagulation factors, except for d-dimer are no help for the detection of thromboembolia. Whether coagulation-factor-similar factors, secreted by the tumour and not measured within the blood, are responsible for thrombembolic events remains to be investigated and are performed currently.