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Pulmonary Embolus Research Paper

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Pulmonary embolus is when solid, liquid or air particles collects in the lungs and cause a blockage. This blockage obstruct blood flow to the lungs depriving the tissue in the lungs of adequate oxygen which leads to tissue death if not corrected. Pulmonary embolus is often cause by blood clot from venous thromboembolism (VTE), mostly a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and is frequent among hospitalized patients, with many death few minutes of the onset of symptoms. When a patient has DVT in pelvic or legs, blood clot from the vein might detached and travel to the right side of the settling in the pulmonary artery which then become a site for platelets to collect. The collections of platelets on the blood clot triggers a substance release that …show more content…

Testing that may be done for a post-surgery patient complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath to confirm the diagnosis of PE would be chest x-ray, to rule out pneumonia or enlarge heart; electrocardiogram to rule out heart attack, and arterial blood gas analysis. PE usually cause an unexpected fall in blood oxygen. In addition, a D-dimer blood test would be done to measure the substance release when platelets collect on detached blood clot. D-dimer would be high in a patient with PE. Furthermore, a CT scan or CT angiogram, ventilation perfusion scanning, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Doppler ultrasound, and echocardiogram would be done. Pulmonary angiogram is an invasive test that might be done in rare …show more content…

The treatment is Anticoagulant treatment may be prescribe to prevent further growth of the blood clot and prevent the formation of new clots. Heparin is a preferred anticoagulant treatment except, the PE in large and hemodynamic instability is present in which case a fibrinolytic drug is used to break up the existing blood clot. The patient’s activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) and international normalized ratio (INR) should be review before treatment and monitored during treatment. Surgical interventions like embolectomy which is the removal of the embolus from the pulmonary blood vessel or inferior vena cava filtration which is the placement of filter in the blood vessel to prevent further formation of the embolus (Ignatavicius & Workman,

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