Treatment of post-thrombotic syndrome by interruption of superficial femoral vein.

Abstract

ALTHOUGH current literature is replete with the various aspects of intravenous clotting and its role in pulmonary embolism, comparatively little stress has been placed on the equally important and disabling consequences of the disease in the affected extremity. These crippling sequelae are a familiar and most discouraging problem to every physician. The tense, swollen, discolored and painful limb is but a late stage of the inflammatory process which originated in the deep veins of the leg many years previously. 1 Thus in an analysis by Linton and Hardy 2 of 32 cases in which the extremities were involved, signs of venous insufficiency developed in 62 per cent within ten years; in 12.5 per cent they appeared the first year, and in 6 per cent they did not become manifest until after twenty years. The rapidity and severity with which the picture of chronic venous insufficiency develops is largely dependent on