Clot Chronicles: Approaching Your Patient with Cancer and Thrombosis

Hello, my name is Dr. Jean Connors. I’m a hematologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. Today on Clot Chronicles, I will be discussing a new program that I’ve worked on in conjunction with the North American Thrombosis Forum (NATF) on cancer-associated thrombosis (CAT).

Oncologists today have a multitude of options available for both the prevention and treatment of CAT. The variety of available anticoagulant choices and strategies can add to the complexity of decision-making for the management of an individual patient.

NATF developed an initiative for clinicians to address the many aspects of cancer-associated VTE. We gathered a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, including medical oncologists, hematologists, cardiologists, and epidemiologists, with expertise in cancer-associated thrombosis. 

The expert panel was divided into groups to address these 4 distinct domains:

• Prophylaxis of CAT
• Treatment of CAT
• Niche populations and types of events that occur so infrequently that a randomized controlled trial is impractical, but commonly enough that clinicians need guidance for management
• An overview of published guidelines which have varied recommendations. 

Zoom meetings were held as a large group and then individually to discuss content, with the end result being the development of manuscripts covering these four areas.

NATF partnered with The Oncologist  journal to publish these pragmatic and concise updates of key recent findings with management approaches for these four domains that are grounded by experience and expertise. We hope that will find them practical and informative guides to aid in the complex decision-making needed to care for patients with cancer and potential or existing thrombosis.

Thank you.

You can find the four papers here.