Clinical characteristics of the study participants
A total of 862 patients underwent thoracic surgery during the study period. Of them, 27, 22, 19, 5, 12 and 8 patients had preoperative venous thrombosis, trauma and emergency surgery, non-lateral position during surgery, history of great saphenous vein surgery, using antithrombotic drugs before admission and extensive pleural cavity adhesions, respectively. In addition, 18 and 6 patients did not receive preoperative and postoperative Doppler ultrasound examinations, respectively. Finally, 745 patients were included in the present study (Fig. 1), with lung cancer, benign lung diseases, esophageal and gastric cardia cancer, and mediastinal and other chest diseases in 517, 108, 60, and 60 patients, respectively. The CMVT group had 185 (24.8%) patients, and the non-CMVT group had 560 (75.2%) patients.
The clinical characteristics of these two groups are shown in Table 2. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups in terms of gender, body mass index, diabetes, preoperative fasting period, surgery side, and primary disorders (P > 0.05). In contrast, there were significant differences between the groups in terms of age, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, Caprini score, anticoagulation prophylaxis, preoperative D-dimer level, type of thoracic surgery, operative duration, frequency of intraoperative muscle relaxant administration, and postoperative day 1 D-dimer level (P < 0.05).
Incidence of CMVT after thoracic surgery
Of the 745 study participants, 185 (24.8%) developed postoperative CMVT. None of the patients with CMVT had clinical symptoms of thrombosis. Of the patients with CMVT, seven (3.8%) had concurrent proximal DVT (two in the left peroneal vein, two in the left posterior tibial vein, one in the right peroneal vein, one in the right posterior tibial vein, and one in the right femoral vein). There was no isolated proximal DVT or symptomatic pulmonary embolism. Of the 517 patients with lung cancer, 117 (22.6%) patients had CMVT, whereas only 20 (18.5%) patients with benign lung diseases had CMVT. In 60 patients with esophageal and gastric cardia cancer, 32 (53.3%) had CMVT.
In these 185 patients with CMVT, the thrombus was located on both sides in 87 (47.1%) patients, left side in 60 (32.4%) patients, and right side in 38 (20.5%) patients. The length of the thrombus on the left side was 4.32 ± 2.22 cm, with the diameter of 0.58 ± 0.2 cm, while the length of the thrombus on the right side was 4.15 ± 2.33 cm, with the diameter of 0.57 ± 0.19 cm. There were no statistically significant differences in the length and diameter of the thrombus between the left and right sides (P > 0.05, Table 3).
Analysis of risk factors for postoperative early CMVT
In univariate logistic regression analysis, the continuous variable preoperative D-dimer level was analyzed after conversion to a categorical variable based on its normal reference. The operative duration was analyzed after conversion to a categorical variable based on its median value. The age and the postoperative day 1 D-dimer level were analyzed as the continuous variables. The results showed that age, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, moderate and high Caprini risk score, no anticoagulation prophylaxis, preoperative D-dimer > 0.5 µg/mL, open heart surgery, operative duration > 135 min, intraoperative muscle relaxant administration > 2 times, and postoperative day 1 D-dimer level were risk factors for the early development of CMVT after thoracic surgery.
Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age, moderate and high Caprini risk score, no anticoagulation prophylaxis, operative duration > 135 minutes, and postoperative day 1 D-dimer level were the independent risk factors for the early development of CMVT after thoracic surgery (Table 4). Among 199 patients without the perioperative anticoagulation prophylaxis, 74 (37.2%) patients had CMVT. Out of 260 patients with the postoperative anticoagulation prophylaxis, 54 (20.8%) patients developed CMVT. Among 286 patients with the preoperative and postoperative anticoagulation prophylaxis, 54 (19.9%) patients had CMVT. Multivariate analysis showed that, compared with the patients with the preoperative and postoperative anticoagulation prophylaxis, the patients without anticoagulation prophylaxis had an increased risk for early postoperative CMVT (OR = 1.859, 95% CI = 1.147–3.013, P = 0.012). Compared with the patients with the preoperative and postoperative anticoagulation prophylaxis, the patients with the postoperative anticoagulation prophylaxis had a similar risk of early postoperative CMVT (OR = 0.913, 95% CI = 0.558–1.493, P = 0.717).
ROC curve analysis of age and postoperative day 1 D-dimer level
The ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC for age was 0.715, with a cutoff value of 58.5, sensitivity of 0.708, and specificity of 0.613. The AUC for the postoperative day 1 D-dimer level was 0.781, with a cutoff value of 1.445, sensitivity of 0.708, and specificity of 0.75. When we used the age of 58 years as the cutoff point, there were 397 and 348 patients aged ≤ 58 years and > 58 years, respectively, and among them, 54 (13.6%) and 131 (37.6%) patients had postoperative CMVT, respectively. When we used the postoperative day 1 D-dimer level of 1.45 as the cutoff point, there were 476 and 269 patients with D-dimer level ≤ 1.45 μg/mL and > 1.45 μg/mL, respectively; among them, 55 (11.5%) and 130 (48.3%) had postoperative CMVT, respectively (Table 5, Fig. 2).