ABSTRACT
Armand Trousseau was probably the first to recognize, almost 140 years ago, the linkage between cancer and thromboembolism, when he noted a high incidence of thrombophlebitis in patients with gastrointestinal malignancy. The bilateral mode of the link between thrombosis and cancer was appreciated by Billroth: he reported that tumor cells may be part of blood thrombi and suggested that the distant embolization of blood vessels is a possible mechanism of metastasis. Ninety years later, Gasic and co-workers were the first to show the direct requirement of platelets for experimental tumor metastasis. Since then, a remarkable amount of information has accumulated on different aspects of platelet-tumor interaction. The presence of cancer may affect the platelets quantitatively (causing either thrombocytopenia or thrombocytosis) and/or qualitatively (causing platelet activation). In turn, platelets are involved by a variety of mechanisms in the progression of neoplasms, mostly during the different stages of tumor metastasis. In this chapter, we will review the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in the tumor-platelet interaction and describe some of its clinical and therapeutic aspects.
