%0 Journal Article
%T Life-threatening aortic thrombosis in a trauma patient homozygous for factor V Leiden mutation: Case report
%A Iraklis Tsangaris
%A Georgios Tsaknis
%A Argirios Tsantes
%A Petros Kopterides
%A Apostolos Armaganidis
%J Thrombosis Journal
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1477-9560-9-8
%X Thrombophilia may be described as a congenital or an acquired tendency to arterial and venous thrombosis. Mutation of Factor V Leiden (FVL) appears as a major predisposing factor for venous thromboembolism and has a high prevalence in the Caucasian population [1]. The relative risk (RR) for the first incident of venous thrombosis and the annual incidence (AI) values associated with this mutation are 7.0 and 0.06%, respectively, in heterozygotes. For homozygotes, RR and AI values are projected to be as high as 80 and 0.5-1.0%, respectively [2,3].The lifetime probability of developing thrombosis is 2.2 for carriers of the FVL mutation, which is quite low compared to carriers of antithrombin deficiency (8.1), protein S deficiency (8.5) and protein C deficiency (7.3) [4]. There is still debate regarding the utility of lifetime anticoagulation in patients with FVL, with one study randomizing patients on warfarin versus placebo showing a risk value reduction in recurrent venous thromboembolism of 76-80% in the warfarin group. According to the investigators, anticoagulation therapy should exceed a 3-month period after the first venous thromboembolic episode with conventional international normalized ratio (INR) target between 2 and 3 [5,6]. Carriage of FVL mutation is highly linked to venous but not arterial thrombosis; however, there is growing evidence linking this mutation to an increased risk for arterial involvement, specifically for myocardial infarction [7-9]. We herein present a rare case of aortic thrombosis in a trauma patient that was found to be homozygous for FVL mutation.A 32-year-old male, presented to the ER of an outside hospital complaining about numbness in both legs after being involved in a street fight 3 days ago. He was a non-smoker with non-significant previous medical history. Physical examination was unrevealing and vital signs were normal. Radiologic evaluation revealed only a fracture of the 10th left rib and the patient was discharged with inst
%U http://www.thrombosisjournal.com/content/9/1/8