From Virchow to red cells (the unended quest)

For Virchow vessel wall, coagulability and flow were the three eventual culprits of thrombogenesis. Pharmacological progress in the three fields has not been parallel. Strangely enough they have found possible therapy in the order of their description: first the vessel wall with vasodilators. Then 'coagulability' with anticoagulants, thrombolytics, antiaggregants. It is only more recently that new methods of investigation have allowed assessment and pharmacology of the main determinant of flow in microvessels: red cell deformability.