Long‐term risk of venous thromboembolism among patients with gastrointestinal non‐neoplastic and neoplastic diseases: A prospective cohort study of 484 211 individuals

Abstract We conducted a prospective cohort study to examine the associations of 21 gastrointestinal diseases with the risk of incident venous thromboembolism (VTE). The study included 485 936 UK Biobank participants free of baseline VTE. The gastrointestinal diseases were defined by the International Classification of Disease (ICD)‐9 and 10 codes with data from the nationwide inpatient data set, the primary care data set, and the cancer registries. Incident VTE cases were defined by ICD‐9 and 10 codes with data from the nationwide inpatient data set. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate the associations of baseline gastrointestinal diseases with incident VTE risk. During a median follow‐up of 12.0 years, 13 646 incident VTE cases were diagnosed. Eleven gastrointestinal diseases (nine non‐neoplastic and two neoplastic) were associated with an increased risk of incident VTE after Bonferroni corrections. The risk of VTE was >50% higher among patients with gallbladder and biliary tract cancer (hazard ratio [HR] 3.15, 95% confidence interval [CI] 95% CI 1.74–5.70), pancreatic cancer (HR 2.84, 95% CI 1.65–4.91), cirrhosis (HR 2.34, 95% CI 1.96–2.79), Crohn's disease (HR 1.61, 95% CI 1.33–1.95), or pancreatitis (HR 1.57, 95% CI 1.31–1.88) compared with individuals without each of these diseases. We observed multiplicative interactions of age, sex, and body mass index with some gastrointestinal diseases ( p < .05). A more pronounced, increased risk of VTE was found among younger, female, or obese patients. The study suggests a 50% higher risk of developing VTE among patients with gallbladder and biliary tract cancer, pancreatic cancer, cirrhosis, Crohn's disease, or pancreatitis.