Search

The Ottawa score (OS) for predicting the risk of recurrent venous thromboembolism (VTE) in cancer patients with VTE may help to guide anticoagulant treatment decisions that will optimize benefit-risk ratios. However, data on its reliability are conflicting. We applied the OS to all cancer patients with VTE enrolled in the prospective multicenter TROPIQUE study who received low-molecular-weight heparin over a 6-month period. Of 409 patients, 171 (41.8%) had a high-risk OS. The 6-month cumulative incidence of recurrent VTE was 7.8% (95%CI 4.2-14.8) in the high-risk OS group versus 4.8% (95%CI 2.6-8.9) in the low-risk OS group (SHR 1.47; 95%CI 0.24-8.55). The Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUROC) of the OS in identifying patients who developed recurrent VTE was 0.53 (95%CI 0.38-0.65), and its accuracy was 57.9%. Among individual variables included in the OS, only prior VTE was significantly associated with the 6-month risk of recurrent VTE (SHR 4.39; 95% CI 1.13-17.04). When pooling data from all studies evaluating this score for predicting VTE recurrence in cancer patients (7 studies, 3413 patients), the OS estimated pooled AUROC was 0.59 (95%CI 0.56-0.62), and its accuracy was 55.7%. The present findings do not support the use of the OS to assess the risk of recurrent VTE in cancer patients.

Aseptic abscess (AA) syndrome is a rare type of inflammatory disorder involving polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs), often associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This study sought to describe the clinical characteristics and evolution of this syndrome in a large cohort. We included all patients included in the French AA syndrome register from 1999 to 2020. All patients fulfilled the criteria outlined by André et al. in 2007. Seventy-one patients were included, 37 of which were men (52.1%), of a mean age of 34.5 ± 17 years. The abscesses were located in the spleen (71.8%), lymph nodes (50.7%), skin (29.5%), liver (28.1%), lung (22.5), and rarer locations (brain, genitals, kidneys, ENT, muscles, or breasts). Of all the patients, 59% presented with an associated disease, primarily IBD (42%). They were treated with colchicine (28.1%), corticosteroids (85.9%), immunosuppressants (61.9%), and biologics (32.3%). A relapse was observed in 62% of cases, mostly in the same organ. Upon multivariate analysis, factors associated with the risk of relapse were: prescription of colchicine (HR 0.52; 95% CI [0.28-0.97]; p = 0.042), associated IBD (HR 0.57; 95% CI [0.32-0.99]; p = 0.047), and hepatic or skin abscesses at diagnosis (HR 2.14; 95% CI [1.35-3.40]; p = 0.001 and HR 1.78; 95% CI [1.07-2.93]; p = 0.024, respectively). No deaths occurred related to this disease. This large retrospective cohort study with long follow up showed that AA syndrome is a relapsing systemic disease that can evolve on its own or be the precursor of an underlying disease, such as IBD. Of all the available treatments, colchicine appeared to be protective against relapse.