ABSTRACT
Hemostatic disturbances belong to the most frequent complications in various malignant diseases of the blood. Bleeding with a sometimes fatal outcome is particularly common in acute leukemias, while a thrombotic tendency or manifest thrombo-embolic complications are characteristic of chronic rather than acute forms of these malignancies. Though a direct role of FXIII of blood coagulation in tumor growth and metastasis has been proposed, only sporadic investigations with sometimes conflicting results have been carried out to evaluate changes of FXIII level in various malignancies. Most of the reports on changes of FXIII level in malignant hematological diseases concern acute leukemias. The decrease of lymphoblastic infiltration and white blood cell count was paralleled by the normalization of FXIII level. Impaired fibrin cross-linking, however, does not necessarily indicate reduced FXIII level, as myeloma proteins might interfere with fibrin stabilization through interaction with cross-linking sites on the fibrin molecule.
