Pulmonary Embolism Registry of a South American Hospital

Abstract

Pulmonary thromboembolism (PE) causes high morbidity and mortality. Due to limited information about the disease in our country, information from others must often be used. That is why we conducted a prospective observational study on the epidemiology of PE treated in a high complexity hospital from Colombia. A search of the scientific literature was carried out finding several initiatives and only two previous local ones. A review of the risk factors, clinical presentation, diagnostic process, treatment, complications and prognosis of the disease was used to construct the tool for data collection in the RedCap program. Between November 2017 and 2018, 122 reports were obtained and after the review, 113 patients were included. A diagnosis of PE was obtained every 3.2 days, being a pathology that mainly affects women older than 60 years. The most frequent risk factors were cancer, limitation for mobilization and history of deep vein thrombosis (DVT). The most frequent symptoms were dyspnea, chest pain and cough. DVT was present in a third of the cases, being mostly distal. The diagnostic methods most used in our hospital are those described in the literature. In spite that a quarter of the patients had dysfunction of the right ventricle, mortality was only 3.5%. When classifying the risk according to PESI, most patients had intermediate risk. This score had a better performance than the shock index for stratifying patients with a high risk of mortality. No relationship was found between biomarkers or dysfunction of the right ventricle and mortality. A 10% of patients had a high risk of developing CTEPH. Our registry allows to know in a greater depth the characteristics of this pathology in a South American Hospital.