Pulmonary Embolism Response Teams: Do They Result in Better Outcomes in Severe Pulmonary Embolism (A Single Center Retrospective Analysis)?

Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients Consulted by a Multidisciplinary Pulmonary Embolism Response Team: 5-Year Experience

“…Any bleeding occurred in 8.1% and major bleeding in 3.0% of patients, which is lower than the previously reported bleeding rates, ranging from 11-13% for any bleeding and 4-13% for major events [10,13,[15][16][17][18]. In our study, in-hospital bleeding events occurred in all risk groups, and five of the bleeding events occurred following systemic thrombolysis.…”

“…The in-hospital mortality rate in our cohort was 6.4%, which is slightly lower than reported by other studies (8 and 14%) [10,[14][15][16][17][18], likely due to the large percentage of low and intermediate-low-risk patients in our cohort. We registered only one death during the 1-month follow-up period, indicating the efficacy of rapid treatment implementation by PERT.…”

“…Among eleven patients treated with catheter-directed procedures, there were four in-hospital deaths (one due to a stroke) and two major bleeding events. Although the efficacy and safety of catheter-directed procedures has been shown in other PERT reports, our data indicate the need for cautious patient qualification for these therapies, as they may be associated with complications [10,[14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…Moreover, recent studies comparing outcomes in the pre-and post-PERT era showed that the availability of multidisciplinary PERT was associated with decreased 30-day mortality, especially among high-risk patients, without incurring additional hospital costs or protracting hospital length-of-stay [11,12]. However, the clear benefits of PERT in terms of mortality have not been confirmed in all studies [6], which is likely due to the limited sample size and short follow-up time of patients included in these studies [6][7][8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Hence, there is an unmet need to collect more data regarding the performance of PERT and share them with the medical community.…”

“…Second, we report on the activity of a single PERT, created at highly specialized academic medical centers with access to interdisciplinary care. Although different institutional PERTs have similar operating models, the local factors may affect the individual therapeutic choices, as reflected by different rates of advanced therapies, depending on the center [10,[14][15][16][17][18]. Therefore, our results cannot be directly extrapolated to other institutions.…”