Trousseau sign

Armand Trousseau was born in Tours, France, in 1801 and graduated from medical school in Paris in 1825. In 1839, he was appointed physician at St. Antoine Hospital and later at the Hotel Dieu.

Dr. Trousseau was known as an observant clinician and prolific writer. He is believed to have been the first physician to perform a tracheotomy (1831), and he first described hemochromatosis (1865). He also described the types of epilepsy, gait disturbances in Parkinson's disease, and Trousseau's sign for latent tetany.

In 1865, Dr. Trousseau gave a series of lectures in which he described the phenomenon of cancer-related thrombosis that would one day bear his name. He described the association of "painful white inflammation" and spontaneous coagulation in patients with thrombosis and advanced tuberculosis and uterine and visceral cancer.

Dr. Trousseau eventually diagnosed the disease in himself and died 2 years later, in 1867, of stomach cancer.

Trousseau's sign is a clinical indication of tetany present, for example, in the setting of hypoparathyroidism.It is named after the French internist Armand Trousseau (1801-1867).

Classically, Trousseau's sign referred to thrombophlebitis leading to the discovery of an occult malignancy, particularly adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. Over time, the term has evolved to encompass a variety of conditions associated with tumor-related hypercoagulability, most commonly including occult malignancies presenting with uncomplicated deep vein thrombosis of the lower extremities (Varki A 2007).

1. Kumar P et al (2022) Eponyms in medical oncology. Cancer Treat Res Commun 31:100516.
2. Varki A (2007) Trousseau's syndrome: multiple definitions and multiple mechanisms. Blood110: 1723-1729.