ABSTRACT
Objective: to determine the coagulation abnormalities in patients with lung cancer
Study design: case-control study
Place and duration: department of Pathology Isra University Hospital Hyderabad, Sindh - Pakistan, and Department of Medicine Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences Jamshoro, Sindh - Pakistan, from June 2006 to December 2007
Patients and methods: seventy subjects were recruited for the study by non-probability convenient sampling technique. Forty freshly diagnosed histopathology proven lung cancer patients were taken as cases, whereas 30 healthy subjects comprised the control group. Platelet count [PLT] was done on hematology analyzer while prothrombin time [PT], activated partial thromboplastin time [APTT] and plasma D-dimer tests were performed by commercially available kits at Department of Pathology, Isra University Hospital Hyderabad, and Sindh - Pakistan. T test was applied to determine the significance of differences between two groups whereas P value up to .05 was taken as significant
Results: the mean +/- SD PLT in cases and controls was 394 +/- 170 and 216 +/- 73 respectively. The mean +/- SD values for these respective groups were for PT 14.7 +/- 0.5 and 12.6 +/- 0.4, for APTT 41.5 +/- 6.2 and 25.8 +/- 3.7. D-dimer levels were <500 in all 30 controls whereas these were up to 2000 in cases
Conclusion: there is a strong relationship between coagulation abnormalities and lung cancer. D-dimer is very sensitive for evaluation of fibrinolysis related with lung cancer