Objective: Incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and need for thromboprophylaxis in urologic surgery have received little attention since only one randomised study has addressed this issue in the last 20 yr. The present prospective observational study evaluated incidence and risk factors for clinically overt VTE in a wide spectrum of consecutive patients undergoing surgery for cancer and compared findings in urologic patients with those in patients undergoing general or gynaecologic surgery.
Methods: Patients having cancer surgery (general surgery, gynaecology, urology) were assessed for clinically overt VTE occurring up to 30+/-5 d after intervention or more if the hospital stay was longer. All suspected VTE events were evaluated by an external independent Adjudication Committee.
Results: A total of 2373 patients, 1238 (52%) undergoing general surgery, 685 (29%) urologic, and 450 (19%) gynaecologic surgery were evaluated. In urologic patients, most procedures (61%) were endoscopic, with bladder and prostate cancer being the most frequent tumours. In-hospital thromboprophylaxis was given to 71.7% of patients, whereas 32.5% received prophylaxis after discharge. The incidence of VTE in urologic patients was lower (0.87%) than that in general surgery and gynaecologic patients (2.8% and 2.0%, respectively). VTE consisted of three cases of nonfatal and three cases of fatal pulmonary embolism (PE). In four of the six cases, VTE occurred during prophylaxis.
Conclusions: VTE still represents a severe complication and remains the most common cause of death after urologic cancer surgery. Efforts should be made to optimise prophylactic measures to further reduce such risk.