Who Is at Low Risk for Death After Acute Pulmonary Embolism?

Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) confers high risk for morbidity and mortality. Researchers compared two risk-stratification scoring systems for predicting death in a retrospective cohort of 302 patients with acute PE.

The PE severity index (PESI) score, which has been shown to predict 30-day and 90-day mortality accurately after acute PE, comprises 11 clinical variables. In the present study, patients were subcategorized by their raw PESI scores into a low-risk class (levels I and II) and a high-risk class (levels III through V). The recently proposed prognosis in pulmonary embolism (PREP) score, an abridged version of the PESI score, comprises only three clinical variables: presence of altered mental status, cardiogenic shock, and cancer (Am …