Pulmonary Embolism in 2017: Increasing Options for Increasing Incidence

摘要

Scope of the problem – An increasing burden of disease Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) is a problem encoun- tered by a majority of medical and surgical specialties in their scope of practice. Acute PE is currently the 3 rd lead- ing cause of cardiovascular death in the United States, resulting in 100,000 deaths annually as estimated by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC (1). There is a pauci- ty of data and a broad range of estimates for both inci- dence and morbidity due to acute PE. The mortality of all patients presenting with acute PE is estimated between 10-30% at 90 days utilizing current treatment regimens (2). The incidence of acute symptomatic PE seems to be increasing from 3/100 to more than 6.5/100 in the past 15 years (2). The increasing burden of disease has led to a period of intense investigation into new therapies and strategies to treat acute PE.