CASE PRESENTATION: A 42-year-old Chinese man presented with polytrauma (severe head injury, lung contusions, and right femur fracture). Emergency craniotomy and debridement of right thigh wound were performed on presentation. Intraoperative hypotension secondary to bleeding was complicated by transient need for vasopressors and acute liver enzyme elevation indicating shock liver. Beginning on postoperative day 5, he developed an acute platelet count fall (from 559 to 250 × 109/L over 3 days) associated with left iliofemoral deep vein thrombosis that evolved to bilateral lower limb ischemic necrosis; ultimately, the extent of limb ischemic injury was greater in the left (requiring below-knee amputation) versus the right (transmetatarsal amputation). As the presence of deep vein thrombosis is a key feature known to localize microthrombosis and hence ischemic injury in venous limb gangrene, the concurrence of unilateral lower limb deep vein thrombosis in a typical clinical setting of symmetrical peripheral gangrene (hypotension, proximate shock liver, platelet count fall consistent with disseminated intravascular coagulation) helps to explain asymmetric limb injury - manifesting as a greater degree of ischemic necrosis and extent of amputation in the limb affected by deep vein thrombosis - in a patient whose clinical picture otherwise resembled symmetrical peripheral gangrene.