Bleeding in patients hospitalized with acute pulmonary embolism in Brazil

Acute Pulmonary Embolism (APE) is a disease with increasing incidence worldwide. Antithrombotics are the cornerstone of the treatment. Bleeding is an adverse event related to this therapy. The objective was to evaluate the prevalence of bleeding in a sample of Brazilian patients hospitalized with APE and the impact of this complication on mortality. Additionally, the performance of some bleeding predictive scores was evaluated in this sample.

A retrospective cohort study was carried out on patients hospitalized with APE from January 2009 through August 2017. The medical records of these patients were reviewed, and the bleeding recorded during hospital stay was classified according to the "Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) bleeding risk." Five different predictive scores for bleeding after APE (RIETE, PE-SARD, VTE-BLEED, Kuijer, and ATRIA) were applied. Overall mortality at 30 days and one year were assessed.

One hundred fifty-nine patients were included. The prevalence of any bleeding was 36/159 (23 %), major bleeding was 10/159 (06 %), minor bleeding was 11/159 (07 %), and bleeding requiring attention was 15/159 (10 %). Only major bleeding was associated with higher mortality at one-year follow-up with a Relative Risk (RR) of 2.00 (95 % CI 1.16-3.57; p = 0.044). All bleeding predictive scores evaluated showed low accuracy in identifying patients at higher risk of bleeding.

Patients hospitalized with APE in Brazil had a high prevalence of bleeding. The major bleeding increased the one-year mortality. The bleeding predictive scores assessed showed limited accuracy in identifying patients at high risk of bleeding.