Pulmonary embolism risk stratification: the intermediate-risk group

Despite all the advances on acute pulmonary embolism risk stratification, a grey area still justifies ongoing debate. Although growing scientific evidence has clarified the extremes of pulmonary embolism risk continuum and has given support to every day's clinical practice decisions, on who may be sent home or needs promptly aggressive measures, the intermediate-risk pulmonary embolism patients are still a challenging group. Moreover, recent studies reported most interesting findings, exposing weaknesses of traditional markers of pulmonary embolism prognosis (e.g. right-ventricular dysfunction), and shed some light on how we can potentially overcome the difficulties of risk assessment in these cases. Our intention is to briefly discuss the recent developments in pulmonary embolism risk stratification, aiming at clarifying their usefulness in current pulmonary embolism management.