Predictors of early death in patients with acute pulmonary embolism

We aimed to determine the predictors of early death in the course of acute pulmonary embolism (APE).

We included 206 patients who had been admitted to our hospital between January 2011 and April 2013 with the diagnosis of APE. We derived a new model including corrected QT interval dispersion (QTcd) and P wave dispersion (Pd), echocardiographic findings, laboratory markers, and blood cell count indices to predict early death in patients with APE.

Thirty patients (14.5%) died; 176 patients (85.5%) lived after diagnosis of APE. Logistic regression (LR) analysis found that troponin I (odds ratio [OR], 1.084 [95% confidence interval {CI}, 1.009-1.165]), creatinine (OR, 4.153 [95% CI, 1.375-12.541]), mean platelet volume (OR, 1.991 [95% CI, 1.230-3.223]), neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) (OR, 1.079 [95% CI, 1.005-1.160]), QTcd (OR, 1.084 [95% CI, 1.043-1.127]), Pd (OR, 1.049 [95% CI, 1.004-1.096]) were associated with early death in APE. New LR model (area under the curve [AUC], 0.970) performed better than the simplified pulmonary embolism severity index (sPESI) score (AUC, 0.859) in predicting early death in APE (P=.021). The predictivity of the sPESI score significantly improved after its single combination with creatinine, QTcd, or troponin I. When the combined model was constructed together with these 6 independent variables and sPESI score, stepwise LR model automatically excluded Pd and NLR, and the AUC from the rest of the combined model was 0.976, which is significantly different from the AUC of sPESI (0.859) (P=.0031).

Creatinine, troponin I, and QTcd significantly improves sPESI score. A new model with troponin I, creatinine, mean platelet volume, NLR, QTcd, and Pd seems to have greater prognostic power than the sPESI scoring system.