Chest
Clinical Investigations: Pulmonary Vascular: ArticlesPrevalence of Acute Pulmonary Embolism Among Patients in a General Hospital and at Autopsy
Section snippets
Clinical Data
Data were obtained from patients at Henry Ford Hospital during the 21-month period between January 1, 1985, and September 30, 1986. During this period, patients were recruited for PIOPED.3 This period was selected for evaluation because a higher percentage of patients with suspected acute PE underwent pulmonary angiography than at other times; pulmonary angiography was part of the PIOPED protocol. Also, data from PIOPED showed the frequency of PE among patients with various probability
Results
The estimated prevalence of acute PE in hospitalized patients was 526 of 51,645 (1.0%; 95% CI, 0.9 to 1.1%). The distribution of diagnoses based on results of pulmonary angiography, V/Q scans, and autopsy is shown in Table 1. Pulmonary embolism in hospitalized patients, based on extrapolated data from autopsy, was estimated to have caused or contributed to death in 122 of 51,645 (0.2%; 95% CI, 0.19 to 0.29%). Pulmonary embolism severe enough to cause clinical manifestations, contribute to death
Discussion
The prevalence of PE in a general hospital, based on clinical diagnoses, many of which were confirmed at autopsy, in an era prior to pulmonary angiography or V/Q scans was 0.2%.10 The prevalence of acute PE in patients in a clinic of digestive surgery, diagnosed by pulmonary angiography, high probability V/Q scans, or autopsy in patients with suspected PE was 0.3%.11 Using comparable criteria, we found the same prevalence (0.3%). The inclusion of patients imputed to have PE based on non-high
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