Background:

Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) represents the third cause of cardiovascular mortality. However, there is lack of information about this entity in our country. Our aim was to describe baseline characteristics, clinical evolution and treatment of patients with acute PE in Argentina.

Methods:

This was a prospective multicenter registry including patients with acute PE hospitalized in centers with cardiology residency from October 2016 to November 2017. Conventional analysis was performed for descriptive and comparative statistics. A value of p<0.05 was considered significant. Cross audit was performed to 20% of participating centers.

Results:

We included 684 consecutive patients from 75 centers with an average age of 63.8 years and 388 (57%) women. Hospital admission was due to PE in 484 (71%) cases. The most frequent predisposing factors were obesity, recent hospitalization, transient rest and active cancer. Anticoagulation was indicated in 661 patients (97%) and reperfusion therapy was performed in 91 (13%). However, only 50 of the 102 patients who presented with hemodynamic instability received reperfusion therapy (49%). Global in-hospital mortality was 12%, mainly associated with acute PE (51%).

Conclusions:

Acute pulmonary embolism presents with high in-hospital mortality in our setting, mainly related to the embolic event. We observed a low use of reperfusion therapies in patients with hemodynamic instability.