Role of echocardiography in acute pulmonary embolism

The difficulty in making an accurate diagnosis of acute pulmonary embolism is well known. To clarify the role of echocardiography, including Doppler echocardiography, in acute pulmonary embolism, we examined hemodynamic and echocardiographic parameters in 9 patients with acute pulmonary embolism just before and after treatment with urokinase. As hemodynamic parameters normalized after treatment, echocardiographic parameters such as deformity index of the left ventricle (LV-DI), end-diastolic dimension of the right ventricle (RVDd), the left ventricle (LVDd), the inferior vena cava, and RVDd/LVDd all significantly changed toward normal. Highly significant correlations were found between the echocardiographic and hemodynamic parameters, the best of which was between the LV-DI and systolic pulmonary artery pressure (r = -0.885, p less than 0.001). Doppler echocardiography quantitatively evaluated the grade of tricuspid regurgitation, and accurately estimated systolic pulmonary artery pressure. We conclude that echocardiography, including Doppler echocardiography, sensitively reflects the right ventricular pressure and volume overload of acute pulmonary embolism, is quite useful for its diagnosis which is often difficult, and is suitable for noninvasive follow up of these patients.