Venous Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolism

Abstract

PULMONARY embolism, once regarded as an unavoidable accident of surgery, today preoccupies the minds of many clinicians, physicians and surgeons alike. For it is recognized as a threatened complication in the great field of serious diseases, injuries and operations that depress the patient and enforce life in bed.In the last decade, pathologists have shown that when post-mortem examinations of the legs are thoroughly made, thrombosis is found in the deep veins of the calf in nearly 50 per cent of all cases at autopsy. Much of this thrombosis is terminal and in no sense a cause of death. Yet . . .