Evaluation of Severity and Prognosis of Pulmonary Embolism

Although technology of diagnosis and treatment continues to improve, the mortality rate of pulmonary embolism remains high. It was detected that more than 10% of the hospital mortality is related to pulmonary embolism. Really, management of this disease is hard. It is a consensus that patients with massif pulmonary embolism, which is characterized hemodynamic impairment, and have indications of aggressive treatments such as thrombolytic. But the issue of treatment of the hemodynamically stable patients with pulmonary embolism accompanied by right ventricular dysfunction is not clear. In last year, because of the cost-effectiveness, it has been reported that low-risk patients could treated as outpatients. Hence, it is need to make an accurate judgment of pulmonary embolism severity and prognosis. Biomarkers such as brain natriuretic peptide, N-terminal probrain natriuretic peptide, cardiac troponin, and heart-type fatty acid-binding protein are very important indicators of pulmonary embolism severity and short-term prognosis. Furthermore, it was reported that the pulmonary embolism severity index and simplified pulmonary embolism severity index are more suitable assessing the overall mortality and long-term prognosis. It is suggested that they could be used especially in identifying low risk group. In this review, in the recent literature, it will be assessed biomarkers, findings right ventricular dysfunction which were detected by imaging tool, and a few clinical prognostic model for evaluating pulmonary embolism severity and prognosis.