Pulmonary Arteriosclerosis and Cor Pulmonale Due to Recurrent Thromboembolism

Abstract

A long-term experiment will be described which has shown that repeated injections of minute autogenous blood clots in rabbits caused pulmonary arteriosclerosis and cor pulmonale. Pulmonary arterial lesions were of two main kinds with respect to circumference of the intimal coat: eccentric, ascribable to intimal incorporation of clot, and circumferential, probably ascribable to hypertension and vasospasm. A counterpart to this animal experiment is probably to be found in human pathology, as suggested by certain case reports, by the pathology of lymphangitis carcinomatosa and by evidence that circulating blood is not clot free.