Dicumarol in Acute Coronary Thrombosis

Experience with Anticoagulants

“…'3 '4 Meanwhile, E. S. Nichol and S. W. Page of Miami, and H. R. Peters, J. R. Guyther, and C. E. Brambel of Baltimore had been accumulating series of patients suffering from myocardial infarction treated with Dicumarol. Their experiences were published early in 1946 and were in agreement with ours.1'5 16 This was encouraging but the data were not conclusive and we therefore proposed the cooperative study which was carried out by the Committee on Anticoagulants of the American Heart Association. The report of this committee includes the details of its work.…”

“…Best and Murray generously agreed to come to New York, sharing some of their limited supply of heparin, and to help us set up the continuous intravenous infusion with suitable controls of the clotting time. For 16 days and nights during which all concerned were constantly apprehensive, the infusion continued with clotting times being taken at 2 to 4 hour intervals. There were no untoward incidents.…”

The Prediction of Thromboembolism

“…Even those investigators reporting positive findings differ in regard to whether whole plasma or dilute plasma shows changes. Those reporting findings in dilute plasma (27,(58)(59)(60)(61)(62) report that whole plasma times show no change or may actually be prolonged (61) and vice versa (63). Other careful series have shown an unsatisfactory incidence of positive tests in cardiac failure (52,64) or in the presence of myocardial infarction (65) or in the presence of clinical thromboembolism (52,65,66).…”

Recent Advances in the Treatment of Cardiovascular Disease

“…Preliminary experience 15 indicates that the routine administration of "dicumarol" to patients who have had an acute myocardial infarction greatly diminishes the incidence of thromboembolic episodes and promises to reduce materially the mortality rate of this condition.…”