Cerebrovascular Diseases in Cancer Patients

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The association of vascular thrombosis with cancer has been known since Trousseau's description of venous thrombophlebitis in patients with carcinoma. Previous studies, mainly autopsy-based, have suggested that the stroke spectrum in cancer patients differ from that of the general population. However, no studies that address this question in the adult oncological population from a clinical perspective are available in Korea. We therefore assessed the clinical features of cerebrovascular diseases in cancer patients. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 44 cases of symptomatic cerebrovascular disease in cancer patients who were admitted to the Wonju Christian Hospital from January 1993 to June 1998 by reviewing their charts and brain CT or MRI; primary cancer, the interval from a cancer diagnosis to the occurrence of stroke, the incidence of hypercoagulability as an infarction cause, the location and size of the infarction, the type of hemorrhage, and the prognosis. RESULTS: The mean age was 62.3 years. Twenty eight cases (63.6%) were ischemic stroke and sixteen cases (36.4%) were hemorrhagic stroke. The most common primary cancer of infarction and hemorrhage was stomach cancer. In ischemic patients, the most common cell type of cancer was ade-nocarcinoma and six cases (21.4%) were considered to have hypercoagulability as a cause. In hemorrhagic patients, seventy percent of patients with coagulopathy died in the hospital or were discharged moribundly. CONCLUSIONS: Although hypercoagulability is present to a greater extent in the patient population than in the general population, it appears that conventional stroke risk factors account for the majority of cerebral ischemic events in the adult cancer population. Cancer patients with intracranial hemorrhage owing to coagulopathy reveal poor prognosis.