Pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) is manifested in numerous ways, from asymptomatic
and/or incidentaloma to being fatal. Because the symptoms and signs are not specific,
PTE has been named as “the chameleon”. Together with this, the prevalent co-morbidities
cause a delay in the correct diagnosis thereby postponing the necessary timely treatment
(that can be life-saving) [
[1]
]. From the number of patients who die because of PTE, the majority do so prior to
reaching the hospital [
[2]
]. Therefore, a significant proportion of patients with cardiac arrest is because
of PTE: 2–13% of arrests occur out of the hospital and 5–6% of those occurring in
the hospital [
3
,
4
,
5
]. No less than 30% of such patients had been misdiagnosed [
[5]
,
[6]
]. The pulseless electrical activity (PEA) had been found in 63% of PTE patients with
cardiac arrest, asystole in 32% and ventricular fibrillation in 5% [
[5]
,
[6]
]. This group of resuscitated PTE patients has a bleak prognosis [
[5]
]. The question of fibrinolytic effect in PTE patients with cardiac arrest has been
an important topic and a challenging task for years [
[7]
].Keywords
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: May 01, 2018
Accepted:
April 30,
2018
Received in revised form:
April 30,
2018
Received:
March 4,
2018
Footnotes
☆The author would like to thank Vesna Milovanovic, MD, Canterbury, UK, for the scientific edit of the manuscript.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 Published by Elsevier Inc.
