Highlights the clinical importance and diagnostic difficulty of acute cor pulmonale secondary to pulmonary embolism, emphasizing the need for accurate diagnosis before considering surgical embolectomy.
The immediate result of a high degree of occlusion of the pulmonary artery is sudden dilatation of the right ventricle and right auricle, which may best be termed acute cor pulmonale in contrast to the well known cor pulmonale of chronic nature associated with progressive enlargement of the right side of the heart secondary to certain pulmonary diseases. The clinical evidence of the acute cor pulmonale resulting from pulmonary embolism deserves consideration because of the frequency and importance of the condition and of the common difficulty in diagnosis. The growing readiness of surgeons to undertake the operative procedure for the removal of the embolus from the pulmonary artery further emphasizes the importance of establishing the correct diagnosis, and until this can be done the entire procedure must be regarded as extremely hazardous. During the past two years we have encountered several instructive cases of pulmonary embolism which have shown, we
McGinn et al. (Sat,) studied this question.