[The use of 125I-fibrinogen in the diagnosis of deep venous thrombosis in medical practice (author's transl)].

A series of 38 "high risk" selected cases of deep venous thrombosis were studied in an internal Medicine Department. Fibrinogen-125I was used. Phlebographic verification was sought in those cases with a positive response to the fibrinogen. From the 38 cases 13 turned out to be positive; in 8 the venous thrombus was identify by venography. In two cases the dorsal venous arch could not be filled. In one case the phlebography could not be carried out. In the remaining two cases the venography did not show a thrombus but there was a pathologic fracture with hematoma and an ossifying myositis, respectively. Both cases were interpreted as false positives to the radioactive fibrinogen. One of them had suggestive clinical manifestations of deep venous thrombosis. Of the eight cases which were positive to the venography and radioactive fibrinogen only four showed a clinical picture suggestive of deep venous thrombosis. If the three cases with negative venographies are included only 36.3 percent of the patients had clinical manifestations. Among the 25 cases which were negative to the radioactive fibrinogen none of them had a clinical picture of deep venous thrombosis, although in 64 percent of them at least one of the clinical signs collected during the physical examination was positive. The correlation between fibrinogen-125I and phlebography turned out to be 80 percent.