C-reactive Protein and Risk of Right Ventricular Dysfunction and Mortality in Patients With Acute Symptomatic Pulmonary Embolism.

BACKGROUND: Right ventricle (RV) dysfunction increases the risk of death from pulmonary embolism (PE). C-reactive protein (CRP) might identify RV inflammation and dysfunction in patients with PE. METHODS: This cohort study enrolled consecutive stable patients with acute PE between 2017 and 2023. We stratified patients by quartiles of CRP. We evaluated the association between CRP quartiles and the presence of RV dysfunction, and used multivariable models to assess for an association between CRP and the outcomes of all-cause and PE-specific mortality during the 30 days of follow-up after PE diagnosis. RESULTS: The study included 633 stable patients with PE. Patients without RV dysfunction had significantly lower median (IQR) CRP levels compared with patients with RV dysfunction (n=509, 31.7 [10.0-76.4]mg/L vs n=124, 45.4 [16.0-111.4]mg/L; P=0.018). CRP showed a statistically significant positive association with the presence of RV dysfunction (P<0.01). On multivariable analysis, CRP level was not significantly associated with 30-day all-cause mortality (adjusted odds ratio [OR] per mg/L increment, 1.00; 95% CI, 1.00-1.01; P=0.095), but higher CRP was associated with significantly higher PE-related mortality (adjusted OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00-1.01; P=0.026). Compared with patients in CRP quartile 1, patients in quartiles 2, 3, and 4 had a stepwise increase in the adjusted odds of 30-day all-cause death of 2.41 (P=0.148), 3.04 (P=0.062), and 3.15 (P=0.052), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: As an indicator of RV dysfunction, CRP may improve risk stratification algorithms for hemodynamically stable patients with acute symptomatic PE.

Dynamic monitoring tools for patients admitted to the emergency department with circulatory failure: narrative review with panel-based recommendations.

Intravenous fluid therapy is commonly administered in the emergency department (ED). Despite the deleterious potential of over- and under-resuscitation, professional society guidelines continue to recommend administering a fixed volume of fluid in initial resuscitation. Predicting whether a specific patient will respond to fluid therapy remains one of the most important, but challenging questions that ED clinicians face in clinical practice. Surrogate parameters (i.e. blood pressure and heart rate), are widely used in usual care to estimate changes in stroke volume (SV). Due to their inadequacy in estimating SV, noninvasive techniques (e.g. bioreactance, echocardiography, noninvasive finger cuff technology), have been proposed as a more accurate and readily deployable method for assessing flow and preload responsiveness. Dynamic monitoring systems based on cardiac preload challenge and assessment of SV, by using noninvasive and continuous methods, provide more accurate, feasible, efficient, and reasonably accurate strategy for prediction of fluid responsiveness than static measurements. In this article, we aimed to analyze the different methods currently available for dynamic monitoring of preload responsiveness.

Shock score for prediction of clinical outcomes among stable patients with acute symptomatic pulmonary embolism.

BACKGROUND: The Composite Pulmonary Embolism Shock (CPES) score has been developed to identify normotensive patients with acute pulmonary embolism (PE) and a low cardiac index (referred to as normotensive shock). We aimed to externally assess the validity of this model for predicting a complicated course among hemodynamically stable patients with acute PE. METHODS: Using prospectively collected data from the PROgnosTic valuE of Computed Tomography scan (PROTECT) study, we calculated the CPES score for each patient and the proportion of patients with a score > 3. We calculated the test performance characteristics to predict a complicated course (i.e., death from any cause, hemodynamic collapse, or recurrent PE) and the discriminatory power using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve. RESULTS: Sixty-three of the 848 (7.4 %) patients had a complicated course during the 30-day follow-up period. Of the 848 enrolled patients, the CPES score was positive (i.e., score > 3) in 78 (9.2 %). The specificity was 92.1 % (723/785), the positive predictive value was 20.5 % (16/78), and the positive likelihood ratio was 3.22 for a complicated course. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve for a complicated course were 0.71 (95 % confidence interval [CI], 0.65-0.78). With the higher score risk classification threshold (cutoff score > 4), the proportion of patients designated as positive was 2.1 %, and the specificity was 98.1 %. When echocardiographic right ventricle (RV) dysfunction was replaced by computed tomographic RV enlargement, the specificity was 85.4 %, the positive predictive value was 14.2 %, and the positive likelihood ratio was 2.06 for a complicated course. When analyses were restricted to the subgroup of patients with intermediate-risk PE, the specificity and the positive predictive value for a complicated course were identical to the overall cohort. CONCLUSIONS: The CPES score has acceptable C-statistic, excellent specificity, and low positive predictive value for identification of hemodynamic deterioration in normotensive patients with PE. CLINICALTRIALS: gov number: NCT02238639.