Assessment of pulmonary embolism severity and scoring using Multi Slice CT in correlation with clinical presentation and echocardiography

Abstract

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common condition with considerable morbidity and mortality; it is more often diagnosed post-mortem by pathologists than in vivo by clinicians. Prompt and accurate diagnosis is difficult because PE may be clinically silent, the symptoms are vague and nonspecific, and in addition there is no definitive, non-invasive diagnostic test to establish its diagnosis. The advent of chest CT scanning for the diagnosis of PE was hailed as an improvement. By 2001, MSCT scanning of the chest was being used more often than V/Q scanning to investigate suspected PE and can image the entire chest with sub-millimeter resolution and requires a breath hold of less than 10 seconds. Beside direct thrombus visualization, MSCT pulmonary angiography allows concomitant evaluation of the severity and scoring of the pulmonary embolism & the hemodynamic effects of PE. Computed tomography angiography (CTA) is the most commonly used modality to diagnose pulmonary embolism and CTA also allows appreciating vessel and