Clinical Findings of Patients with Acute Pulmonary Embolism in a sample of Iraqi Patients

Abstract

Background: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is one of the serious medical issues with higher prevalence and mortality rates, it is a significant cause of hospitalization frequently requiring critical care services. Objectives: To evaluate clinical findings of patients with PE. Patients and Methods: A cross sectional study done in multiple teaching hospitals in Baghdad, during a period of from 1st of March 2023 to 1st of January 2024, for patients who were diagnosed with PE by CT pulmonary angiography. The data are collected from 100 patients admitted to the cardiac care unit, general medical and surgical wards of Alyarmouk, ALImamein AL-Kadhimein and Baghdad medical city teaching hospitals according to different parameters such as age, sex, site of occurrence whether inpatient or outpatient and predisposing factors (hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking, bed ridden over a 72-hour period, long time trip more than 4 hours, recent surgery, pregnancy, the use of contraceptive pills, haematological diseases, solid malignancies and the personal or family history of venous thrombosis).Each patient underwent a carful clinical assessment especially for vital signs, oxygen saturations, lower limb unilateral swelling, jugular venous pressure, cardiac finding, in addition to the following investigation Complete Blood Count, Biochemistry, Electro cardio gram.Results: The average age of the participants were 53.9 years, with astandard deviation of 16.2 years, the female was 77.0% of the cases, PE incidents occurred more often outside the hospital setting (71.0%) than within (29.0%), 9.0% of participants had a previous history of VTE, the most prevalent risk factor was immobilization, observed in 88.0% of cases, the most common clinical presentation is shortness of breath (98.0%). The initial treatments included thrombolysis used in 36% of cases. Conclusion: The pulmonary embolism events were more prevalent among female sex in this study, the outpatients were more than inpatients, the shortness of breath is the most common clinical presentation. The immobilization was the most common risk factor.