Low rates of symptomatic venous thromboembolism in patients with gastrointestinal cancer: an Iranian study.

: Venous thromboembolism (VTE), which mostly includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality in patients with cancer. As little is known about VTE associated with gastrointestinal cancers among the populations in the Middle East. This study aimed to determine the relative frequency of symptomatic VTE in patients with gastrointestinal malignancies in Iran. The charts of patients with gastrointestinal cancers in our institute from April 2010 to March 2015 were investigated for symptomatic VTE in a retrospective study. In this study, all of the patients received chemotherapy. The data included the site of cancer, time of therapies initiation, patient's characteristics, type of VTE, the time of developing symptomatic VTE of patients with gastrointestinal cancer and the stage which VTE occurred. All of DVTs and pulmonary embolism were confirmed by Doppler ultrasonography and computed tomography angiography. A total of 614 consecutive patients with gastrointestinal cancer were included in study. In total, 22 patients (3.6%) were found to have experienced symptomatic VTE (confidence interval 95%: 2.1-5.1%) which included: 19 patients who suffered from DVT and three of them detected pulmonary embolism, and other types of VTE were not reported. Out of 22 patients with VTE, 17 of them have been occurred after chemotherapy (77%) within 6.17 ±â€Š5.17 (range, 1-19) month after starting chemotherapy. The distribution of frequency of stage in which the VTE occurred, was more in stage III and IV. The rate of symptomatic VTE in patients with gastrointestinal cancer in Iran is relatively lower than other studies done in the west. Therefore, it seems the rate of VTE differs in different ethnic groups.

Clinicopathological Features and Survival Rate of Colorectal Adenocarcinoma Patients with and without a KRAS Mutation: a FiveYear Study in Yazd, Iran.

BACKGROUND: By some estimates, colorectal carcinoma is the third most common cancer worldwide. The most appropriate method of treatment, especially of its metastatic form, is determined based on KRAS status. The present study was conducted on patients with colorectal cancer positive or neagtive for a KRAS mutation in terms of survival rate and the response to treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Medical records of all cases with colorectal cancer hospitalized from 2010 to 2015 and with KRAS testing results were studied. Data such as gender, age, tumor (size, grade, location, stage), treatment type, KRAS status and survival were considered as variables. Survival analysis was performed using the KaplanMeier method and Logrank test. Statistical significance level was defined as P value <0.05. RESULTS: Out of 90 patients, 55 (61.2%) were male and 35(38.8%) were female with the age range of 2287 years. The overall disease specific survival was 53±3 (Mean ± SE) months with 95%CI:4760, and there were statistically significant differences between the mean survival rate with tumor stage and the response to treatment (log rank test, PV=0.007 and PV=0.001) respectively. The risk of mortality was 2.02 times higher in patients with mutant KRAS compared to those with the wild type of the gene; however, this difference was not statistically significant (OR=2.016; 95%CI: 0.685.9; PV=0.197). CONCLUSIONS: In our study the overall 5year disease specific survival rate was low as compared to similar studies elsewhere. Significant correlations were found between survival time with treatment type and tumor stage.