The disseminated intravascular clotting syndromes (consumption coagulopathies, etc) are being recognized with increasing frequency among patients with a hemorrhagic diathesis, overt hemorrhage, thrombosis, or a combination of such findings. Interest in this problem has increased as our knowledge of these syndromes broadens, both in terms of clinical and laboratory manifestations. Since these disorders appear in a heterogeneous group of cases, it is quite likely that the mechanisms responsible for disseminated intravascular coagulation may be somewhat different in each, but as a group they provide clinical counterparts for a variety of animal observations which have been made in recent years. Included among these are:
1. The demonstration of the occurrence of intravascular clotting in severe forms of hemodynamic shock, antigen-antibody reactions, and following a variety of bacterial toxins.
2. The importance of intravascular coagulation in the Sanarelli-Schwartzman phenomen, both of the local and generalized types.
3. The striking effects of endotoxin