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It is our purpose to present evidence to refute the current popular belief that the incidence of hidden cancer in patients with idiopathic venous thrombosis is significant. It has been our experience that any clinical relationship between idiopathic venous thrombosis and hidden cancer is very questionable; a critical analysis of the pertinent literature confirms this experience. Trousseau,1in 1865, first pointed out the relationship between venous thrombosis and tumors arising in various intra-abdominal organs. Sproul2reported on the association of carcinoma in the body and tail of the pancreas with multiple venous thrombosis; her paper has been used to support isolated case reports. An example of an erroneous interpretation of Sproul's study to justify and corroborate a small group of cases is as follows3: In 1938, Sproul analyzed 4,258 autopsies performed on patients with carcinoma, and found that multiple thrombosis was present in 31.3 per cent of
William G. Anlyan (Sat,) studied this question.