Abstract
It was well defined that antithrombin III (AT III) could neutralize thrombin, activated factor X and plasmin. partial deficiencies of AT III have been shown to be associated with recurrent venous thromboembolism.
This report presents the variations of AT III and heparin resistance (HR) of patients with ilio-femoral vein thrombosis, superficial vein thrombophlebitis or leg varicosis, compared with collagen disease or Buerger' s disease. AT III was measured by immunodiffusion method.
The results were as follows:
1. Plasma AT III of all patients with venous diseases maintained almost normal values (26.2±7.1mg/dl), but out of them, ilio-femoral vein thrombosis showed low levels of AT III (24.7±7.3mg/dl), especially in acute phase (19.4±4.7mg/dl), and superficial vein thrombophlebitis retained within normal range (27.7±7.2mg/dl).
2. Two clinical cases demonstrated here showed the relative correlation between clinical feature and plasma AT III.
3. In a series of patients with or without liver cirrhosis who had undergone major surgery, plasma AT III decreased during 3-14 days after operation and recovered to preoperative value. But they did not suffer fromdeep vein thromboembolism.
From these investigations, we suppose that plasma AT III decrease in iliofemoral vein thrombosis is due to the increased metabolism of AT III which combined with thrombin and that hypo-AT III-emia may cause venous thromboembolism together with other hypercoagulable factors.
