Fat and thromboembolism after total hip replacement.

Three patients who died after total hip replacement were subjected to a necropsy examination. The object of this was to determine whether there was any evidence of a relationship between fat emboli produced by the surgery and thrombotic complications. All three patients showed extensive fat embolisation in the lungs and antemortem thrombosis. In two of these the morphological relationship between these two phenomena was such that it seems likely that the fat emboli preceded and caused the thrombosis.