Frequency of malignant diseases in deep venous thrombosis of the lower extremities.

A retrospective investigation was carried out in a total of 200 patients (100 women, 100 men) with an average age of 61.0 years (19-97 years) with a phlebographically verified deep vein thrombosis of the lower limbs. It was examined whether and how frequently acute phlebothromboses are associated with a malignant underlying disease not detected up to that time. Specific diagnostics showed that a malignancy could be detected in 11.5% of all patients. As expected, the number of freshly discovered malignant diseases rose with increasing age. Seventy-one percent of all patients with a phlebothrombosis and a simultaneous tumor condition were more than 60 years old. The results clearly show that screening for occult malignant diseases should be carried out systematically and routinely in patients with etiologically unclear acute deep vein thromboses, at least from the 50th year of life onwards.