Performance of Pulmonary Embolism Risk Scores for Assessment of Outcome in Computed Tomographic Pulmonary Angiography Confirmed Patients

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common and potentially lethal condition in the emergency department requiring early and accurate management.

The short-term mortality rate of PE varies widely and ranges from less than 2% in many patients with non massive PE to more than 95% in patients who experience cardiorespiratory arrest.

Although several prognostic models of acute PE are currently used, all of them have practical limitations.

Of all clinical scores integrating PE severity and comorbidity, the Pulmonary Embolism Severity Index (PESI) and its simplified version,(sPESI) have been most extensively validated to date.

However, current prognostic scores for pulmonary embolism (PE) are partly based on patients without PE confirmation via computed tomographic pulmonary angiography (CTPA), involving subjective parameters and complicated scoring methods [8].