It's never long before the topic of pulmonary embolism makes it back into the controversial lime light and a recent paper on the association of PE with syncope is the lastest reason.
The PESIT trial, just published in the New England Journal of Medicine certainly grabs your attention when you read the abstract, with the implication that PE's are a major and hugely missed cause of the presentation of syncope. It also highlights a diagnostic work up that consists of blanket Well's scoring +/- d-dimer to decide who should be worked up further for the potential diagnosis, for every single patient presenting with syncope, including those with no appropriate symptoms or signs!
As always to read the abstract and draw a conclusion is to fall at the first hurdle, so take a listen to the podcast as we dive a bit deeper into the paper and topic, and of course make sure you take a look at the paper yourself and see what you make of the headline grabbing article
Enjoy!
References and Further Reading