Clinical Characteristics of Pulmonary Thromboembolism and Rate of Computed Tomographic Pulmonary Angiography Confirmation among patients treated for Pulmonary thromboembolismatSt Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Venousthromboembolism is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is also the most common complication in hospitalized patients. Although there is available data on clinical characteristics & use confirmatory Gold standard diagnostic modality of PTE in hospitalized patients in developed countries, there is a limited information in developing countries especially in Ethiopia OBJECTIVE: To assess the clinical characteristics of Pulmonary thromboembolism& rate of Computed tomographic pulmonary angiography confirmation in inpatientstreated as PTE at St Paul’s hospital millennium medical college METHODS: Adescriptive cross-sectional retrospective chart review study was done,Data from HIMS registration book who have been admitted to St Paul’s hospital internal medicine departmentward and MICU with a diagnosis of PTE & those diagnosed to have PTE after admissionfrom January 2016 to December 2018 GCwere randomly selected. Datawas analyzed using SPSS version 25.0. Thedescriptive analysis was done by simple frequency & proportion &the resultsare presented by tables, graphs and pie chart. RESULT: From a total 150 patients treated as PTEfrom January 2016 to December 2018 GC,64 cases were randomly selected for this study &58 cases who fulfil the inclusion criteria were analyzed.70.7 % (41) were females, the mean age was38.3(±16 SD)&69% of the patients were under 40 years. The most common clinical presentations were dyspnea (96.6%)& chest pain (70.7%) & DVT was the common comorbidity (27.5%). Therate of CTPA confirmation was 71%(CTPA was done for 38 cases & it confirmed PTE in 27 cases (46. 6% of 58). 33.3%(n=9) of confirmed cases were cases of massive PTE. Wells score is documented in only 3 cases (5%) CONCLUSSION& RECOMMENDATION:our study reported high rate of PTEamong the young and middle aged with female predominance of 70%.There is also underutilization of wells score &CTPA. 33.3% of confirmed cases were massive PTE.PTE presents in various clinical settings, and poses a great diagnostic challenge to the physician. A high degree of clinical suspicion with close observation of key clinical symptoms & signs, awareness & adherence to guideline directed workup is very important to properly identify &treat this entity. Key words: clinical characteristics, CTPA confirmation, PTE, Ethiopia.