Combined malignant hemangiopericytoma and deep venous thrombosis. A case report

Malignancies, antiproliferative drug treatment, cancer-related conditions l ike immobilization, perioperative status and radiotherapy are risk factors for hypercoagulability, Setting aside mass or invasion-related venous throm bosis, the differential diagnosis regarding the etiopathogenesis (paraneopl astic syndrome or antiproliferative treatment) is usually problematic, The authors report a case of combined malignant hemangiopericytoma and recurren t deep venous thrombosis in the right inferior limb. Through a literature review, the following issues are discussed: 1)the crit eria for cyto-histopathologic assessment; 2) the involvement of pericytes b oth in coagulation and platelet aggregation; 3) the importance of discrimin ating true paraneoplastic syndromes from other tumor-related clinical manif estations; 4) the response to external radiotherapy of malignant hemangiope ricytoma as limited disease; 5) the poor results of doxorubicin-ifosfamide polychemotherapy and dacarbazine monochemotherapy in metastatic disease. Although doxorubicin-ifosfamide treatment was in progress in the reported c ase, the authors conclude that the recurrent deep venous thrombosis is like ly to be paraneoplastic, even if such a diagnosis has not been previously r eported in the literature.