Predicting the Risk of PE Using Risk Factors

by Sonny Tat

This week's Journal Club at Children's National will be discussing an article called "Children Suspected of Having Pulmonary Embolism: Multidector CT Pulmonary Angiography--Thromboembolic Risk Factors and Implications for Appropriate Use." The article was published in Radiology 2012 by Lee et al at Boston Children's. 

The authors reviewed charts of consecutive pediatric patients who were suspected of having a pulmonary embolism and referred for chest CT angiogram. Using a positive CT as a gold standard, they compared the number of thromboembolic risk factors in patients with and without PE and tried to see if thromboembolic risk factors and/or d-dimer analysis could determine the need for chest CT.