Case Report Prostate Cancer-Associated Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation with Excessive Fibrinolysis Treated with Degarelix

Copyright © 2015 Shawn Y. Ong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) with excessive fibrinolysis (XFL) is a rare and acute life-threatening variant of DIC in patients with prostate cancer. Patients present with coagulopathy, hypofibrinogenemia, and systemic bleeding. We describe a case of DIC XFL caused by prostate cancer (PC) successfully treated with a single injection of degarelix, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) receptor antagonist. This led to prompt control of the patient’s coagulopathy within ten days of treatment. Our case highlights features of this rare and devastating hemorrhagic complication of PC along with a fast-acting and effective therapeutic drug option. 1. Case Description A 61-year-old Hispanic man with past medical history of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) treated with transure-thral resection of the prostate the preceding year presented to our emergency room with a nonhealing wound on his right thigh. He reported that he sustained a laceration to his right thigh during work with machinery one week prior t