Cancer and Clotting — Trousseau's Warning

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Abstract
A relation between hypercoagulability and cancer has been recognized for more than 125 years. Trousseau,1 lecturing on phlegmasia alba dolens in 1872, noted that deep-vein thrombosis of the extremities often accompanied visceral cancer and concluded that "spontaneous coagulation is common in cancerous patients" because of a "special crasis of the blood, which irrespective of inflammation, favors intra-venous coagulation." Trousseau's observations have subsequently been verified by the accumulation of clinical and pathological data suggesting systemic activation of the coagulation cascade in patients with cancer. Postmortem studies2 have demonstrated a markedly increased incidence of thromboembolic disease in patients who died of cancer, . . .