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Prevention of VTE in cancer patients
Figure 4. Effect of anticoagulant pro- phylaxis on the incidence of major bleeding in ambulatory cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
accurate assessment of the incidence of VTE during fol- low-up. However, the pooled analysis of all the trials with VTE or death as the primary outcome confirmed the efficacy of anticoagulants without heterogeneity. Moreover, to remain on the safe side, the primary safety analysis of major bleeding in our study included all the trials and did not show any safety signal.
In conclusion, we found that anticoagulant prophylaxis is effective and acceptably safe in ambulatory cancer patients treated with chemotherapy. The selection of the
most suitable candidates (patients at increased risk of VTE) for anticoagulant prophylaxis among ambulatory cancer patients treated with chemotherapy is a crucial issue and further studies are required to optimize the effi- cacy of this intervention.
Acknowledgments
We are indebted to Martina Savoia from the University of Perugia for her assistance in the literature search and prepara- tion for data analysis.
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