Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism

This study aimed to investigate the risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE) among patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) during the first 5 years following a diagnosis of OSA, compared with patients without OSA during the same period.

This study was a matched-cohort study in Taiwan that included 1424 study subjects with OSA and 14,240 randomly selected comparison subjects. We identified subjects who subsequently received a diagnosis of VTE within the first 5 years following their index date. Stratified Cox proportional hazards regressions were performed to compare the 5-year VTE-free survival rates between the study cohort and comparison cohort.

The incidence of VTE was 2.67 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.69-4.70) and 0.96 (95% CI, 0.75-1.20) for subjects with and without OSA, respectively. Stratified Cox proportional hazards regressions revealed that the hazard ratio for VTE among subjects with OSA was 2.07 (95% CI, 1.21-3.52) that of comparison subjects after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, renal disease, obesity, whether or not a subject was hospitalized, whether or not a subject had suffered a fracture within 1 year prior to the index date, and censoring those who died during the 5-year follow-up period. We further found that the adjusted hazard ratio of deep vein thrombosis among OSA patients was 1.88 (95% CI, 1.08-3.29) that of comparison subjects.

Our results suggest that there is an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis among OSA patients during the first 5 years following their diagnosis.