2014 ESC Guidelines on the diagnosis and management of acute pulmonary embolism

At the ESC (European Society of Cardiology) congress 2014 in Barcelona S. Konstantinides and A.Torbicki presented the 2014 ESC Guidelines on the diagnosis and management of acute pulmonary embolism including the web addenda. These were simultaneously published in the European Heart Journal at the congress. Acute Pulmonary Embolism (PE) is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. As many as 15% of all patients suffering PE will die within the first month and, of those who do survive 30%, will develop recurrent PE over the next 10 years. Of those who died, only 7% were correctly diagnosed during their lifetime. Incomplete resolution of PE may lead to the development of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension with an estimated prevalence of 0.1-4.0% at 2 years.