Most Pulmonary Emboli Resolve

Objective: To evaluate the rate of resolution of clot burden on pulmonary CT angiography (CTA) in the setting of acute pulmonary embolism (PE). Design: Retrospective study. Participants: Included in this study were 111 adult patients who had acute PE diagnosed on pulmonary CTA and had at least 1 follow-up pulmonary CTA in which no new foci of PE were detected. For patients with >1 follow-up pulmonary CTA, only the latest follow-up pulmonary CTA was used for analysis. The average interval between baseline and follow-up pulmonary CTA was 65 days (range, 1 to 312 days). All patients received anticoagulation. Methods: Images from the pulmonary CTA examinations were transferred to a PC workstation that had an in-house–developed DICOM reader. For each examination, the number, location, and degree of pulmonary arterial obstruction by an endoluminal filling defect was recorded. Based upon these data, the Qanadli score and Mastora score were calculated. In addition, a semiautomated segm more...