Background: Venous thromboembolism, (VTE) including both deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is reported to be the third most frequent cardiovascular disease. People affected need anticoagulant therapy for at least 3 months but often “unprovoked” events tend to remain treated life-long, with a relevant bleeding risk.

Aims: To assess
i) the risk of recurrence in the long term period (beyond 5 years), and
ii) the influence of other factors (presence/discontinuation of therapy, sex, age).

Methods:

In this retrospective study we collected data from outpatients during follow-up visits at our centre. We compared the risk of recurrence after at least 5 years from the diagnosis of VTE between provoked vs unprovoked events and the Odds Ratio were calculated.

Results: Among 1124 events, 440 (39.1%) were unprovoked and 684 (60.9%) were provoked. Recurrence occurred in 57 (%) patients with an unprovoked event and in 78 (%) patients with a provoked event with global rate of recurrence in our population of 12.0% (Odds Ratio (OR) 1.16 (95% confidence interval 0.8 – 1.66; p=0.43). We observed no significant difference in patients with or without extended therapy neither in the overall population (OR 2.19, 95% confidence interval 0.99 – 4.83; p=0.052) nor in the group with an unprovoked event (OR 1.17, 95% confidence interval 0.47 – 2.91; p=0.73).

Conclusions: In our study we found no statistical significance between the risk of long-term recurrence, independently from the etiology of the first event or the presence of a “long-term” therapy.

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ISTH Congress Abstracts - https://abstracts.isth.org/abstract/long-term-recurrence-of-venous-thromboembolism-a-retrospective-case-control-study/