May 26, 2015 – PE

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Anchor lead:  A team approach may help in pulmonary embolism, Elizabeth Tracey reports.

Pulmonary embolism, abbreviated PE, is when a blood clot forms in the blood vessels to the lung and may be life-threatening.  People with cancer, trauma, those who have been bedridden for some time, may all be susceptible.  Anobel Tamrazi, an interventional radiologist at Johns Hopkins, describes a team approach to this often emergent condition.

Tamrazi: When a PE patient shows up they show up everywhere.  All of a sudden in the emergency room, all of a sudden in the cancer ward, all of a sudden in the ICU, so every team is a little confused, where do we go who do we call? So we form a team.  Anywhere in the hospital you see a patient with big clots, and clinically they look like they’re submassive or massive, you call this number, present the patient and say what’s the best management, and let’s come up with an idea.   :28

Tamrazi says the team will decide the best treatment and implement it, ideally improving outcomes.  He says only a few places nationally are using this approach to PE.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.