Age and long-term outcomes of patients with venous thromboembolism: From the COMMAND VTE Registry

There is still a scarcity of data on the relation between age and long-term clinical outcomes of patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE).

The COMMAND VTE Registry was a multicenter registry enrolling 3027 consecutive patients with acute symptomatic VTE in Japan between January 2010 and August 2014. We divided the entire cohort into 3 groups: patients aged <65 years (N = 1100, 36.7%), patients aged 65 ≤ and ≤ 80 years (N = 1314, 43.4%), and patients aged >80 years (N = 603, 19.9%).

Discontinuation of anticoagulation therapy during the follow-up period was most frequent in patients aged <65 years (44%, 38% and 33%, P < 0.001). The cumulative 5-year incidences were 12.7%, 9.8% and 7.4% for recurrent VTE, 10.8%, 12.2% and 14.9% for major bleeding, and 23.0%, 31.4%, and 38.6% for all-cause death. Adjusting for cofounders and taking into account the competing risk of all-cause death, the lower risk of patients aged >80 years, and those aged 65 ≤ and ≤ 80 years relative to those aged <65 years remained significant for recurrent VTE (65 ≤ age ≤ 80 years, HR: 0.71, 95%CI: 0.53-0.94, P = 0.02; age > 80 years, HR: 0.59, 95%CI: 0.39-0.89, P = 0.01), and the risk remained insignificant for major bleeding (65 ≤ age ≤ 80 years, HR: 1.00, 95%CI: 0.76-1.31, P = 0.98; age > 80 years, HR: 1.17, 95%CI: 0.83-1.65, P = 0.37).

In the current real-world VTE registry, there was no significant difference in the risk of major bleeding depending on different age groups, while younger patients showed an excess risk for recurrent VTE compared with older patients.