Abstract
Plasma fibrinogen is one of the main cardiovascular risk factors and its concentration is influenced by several physiological and pathological situations. In this paper the authors measured the fibrinogen levels in 30 subjects (10 healthy subjects and 20 patients affected by primary varicose syndrome of the lower limbs) under baseline conditions and after 1-hour orthostatism. The results of our study demonstrate that the varicose group shows higher fibrinogen values than the control group in all the examined districts (the upper and lower limbs). In the varicose group, fibrinogenemia increases significantly after orthostatism in both the varicose vein and the arm compared with the baseline values. In the control group, fibrinogenemia increases significantly after orthostatism in both the varicose vein and the arm compared with the baseline values, but this increase is not as significant as in the varicose group. Our results, on the one hand, confirm previous observations showing that fibrinogenemia increases in the vascular districts affected by postural stasis; on the other hand, they prove that the level of fibrinogen can also be influenced in districts other than those directly affected by stasis.
