Scott Salter and Billy Bates recently defended two internal medicine specialists in a wrongful death case alleging inappropriate management of a patient's anticoagulation therapy subsequent to his diagnosis with deep vein thrombosis.   The patient was admitted for excision of an obstruction of his ureter.  On the first post-operative day, the patient was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis.  Without treatment, DVT carries a high risk of pulmonary embolus and death.  The internists were consulted to provide anticoagulation treatment for the DVT.  Approximately ten days into the hospitalization, the patient's condition deteriorated and he developed metabolic acidosis, sepsis and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy.  He died the following day.  The plaintiff contended that the internists inappropriately managed the patient's anticoagulation for the DVT failing to recognize that he was bleeding from his genitourinary tract (the site of the surgery) and failing to stop the anticoagulation therapy.  The plaintiff contended that as a result of the failure to recognize the bleed and stop the anticoagulation therapy, the patient lost enough blood to suffer a circulatory collapse and die.  In response, the internists argued that the management of the patient's anticoagulation therapy was appropriate.  The internists also argued that the patient did not die from a circulatory collapse secondary to a bleed, but that the patient developed post-operative adhesions in his abdomen that resulted in obstruction and death of a segment of his small bowel with subsequent metabolic acidosis, sepsis and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy.  The case was successfully defended with both physicians being dismissed during the course of the trial.