Pulmonary Embolism in Children

Pulmonary embolism is generally believed to be rare in childhood, and my own survey of the pub-lished material suggests that under 50 cases have so far been recorded. Stevenson and Stevenson (1949), who surveyed published reports from all over the world and reported a case in 1949, could find only 30 reports of which only 16 had had complete autopsies. Not all cases, however, are fatal. Cashman (1956) reported an embolus in a boy of 9 years who recovered completely. The first reported case appears to have been almost exactly a century ago when Ldschner (1861) described a pulmonary embolus in a 9-year-old boy, which followed phlebitis associated with a fracture of the tibia. His case typifies many of the earlier case reports of the pre-antibiotic days where emboli appeared to follow injury to bones and muscles (Rosenbloom and Henderson, 1935). Rupp (1921) tabulated 11 cases of fatal pulmonary embolism that had followed prolonged wasting disease in children under the age of 10 years. Several cases have been reported following prolonged or acute