Evaluation of Hemodynamic Changes and Respiratory Physical Findings in Patients with Pulmonary Embolism

Abstract

Introduction: Pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE) is a potentially fatal disease with nonspecific symptoms and signs. Patients with Pulmonary embolism often have dyspnea, chest pain, haemoptysis, tachycardia tachypnea and respiratory physical finding including hypoxia and decreased ETCO2. Daily patients with Pulmonary embolism are very few in hospital course and we aimed to determine clinical and paraclinical findings in hospital pulmonary embolism patients.

Methods: we assessed in hospital course of 104 patients with pulmonary embolism with symptom (dyspnea, chest pain, and hemoptysis) and signs (tachypnea, tachycardia, DVT signs, blood pressure) and respiratory physical findings (PO2, ETCO2).

Results: majority of patients had risk factor for PTE; the most common was cancer. 21.2% of patients had apparent DVT in Doppler sonography. Isolated dyspnea (38%), chest pain with and without hemoptysis (60%) and syncope (2%) were observed in patients. Mean duration of dyspnea resolution was 3.4 days. Mean duration of chest pain resolution was 1.76 days. Mean duration of hemoptysis resolution was 2 days. 64.4% of the patients were hypoxic and mean duration of hypoxic resolution was 2.63 days. Mean duration of tachycardia resolution was 2.37 days. No relation was observed between size of PTE and mortality or hypotension and PO2. Mean ETCO2 was 23±2 mmHg and 86.5% of patients had ETCO2 lower than 28. Mean duration of ETCO2 resolution was 3.6 days. Most common physical finding that resolved later than others was ETCO2. In 32.7% of patients, ETCO2 did not resolve.

Key words: Pulmonary thromboembolism; Tachycardia; Tachypnea; Hemoptysis; Hypoxic; ETCO2