A 42-year-old woman under your care for the management of obesity calls you because she has a sister who had a pulmonary embolism. The patient recently read that statin medications are associated with a lower risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and wonders whether she should take a statin drug to prevent the development of pulmonary emboli.

In two patients who had recently undergone major abdominal operations and were later suspected of having pulmonary emboli, pulmonary angiography showed no evidence of embolism, but in both cases one of the hemidiaphragms was clearly outlined by contrast material. It is suggested that subdiaphragmatic inflammation was responsible for this unusual appearance.

BACKGROUND The association between mortality and localization of central thrombus in hemodynamically stable patients with pulmonary embolism (PE) is unclear. Sufficient data are not available to help clinicians to select between low molecular weight heparin (LMWH), unfractionated heparin (UFH) and thrombolytics for the management of central thrombus. The present study aims to investigate whethe...

A prospective study involving 500 consecutive patients undergoing hip replacement was performed to find out whether a combination of heparin and dihydroergotamine was effective in preventing postoperative fatal and non-fatal emboli. Deep-vein thrombosis was demonstrated in 131 cases (26.2%), in 99 of whom thrombi were confined to the ipsilateral (operated) limb and in 13 to the contralateral li...

Massive pulmonary embolism is a dramatic, often fatal, event. If death is not immediate, embolectomy using cardiopulmonary bypass is feasible, and a num ber of reports have appeared in recent years attest ing to its value (1-3). However, emergency em bolectomy is not practical on a wide scale. In over 300 cases of pulmonary embolism with positive lung-scan findings, we have observed that major ...

Pulmonary hypertension in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the absence of chronic parenchymal lung disease or pulmonary emboli is rare. We report such a case with an acute and rapidly progressive onset of symptoms in a patient who had started taking the contraceptive pill eight months previously.

increased alveolar pressure in the fluid-filled lung. 1 0 However, in our patient, the shift was noted at a time when the lung was not filled with fluid. It appears likely that the perfusion shift we observed was a response to regional alveolar hypoxia, related to the postiavage decrement in ventilation. 1 3 ' 1 4 Sequential ventilation-perfusion scintiphotographic studies also were useful in d...

Pulmonary embolism is generally believed to be rare in childhood, and my own survey of the published material suggests that under 50 cases have so far been recorded. Stevenson and Stevenson (1949), who surveyed published reports from all over the world and reported a case in 1949, could find only 30 reports of which only 16 had had complete autopsies. Not all cases, however, are fatal. Cashman ...

Paget-Schroetter syndrome, also known as effort thrombosis, is a relatively rare disease process characterized by primary thrombosis to the subclavian and axillary veins. It usually presents in younger individuals, commonly affecting the dominant side upper extremity, and the diagnosis relies on a combination of imaging, laboratory tests, and clinical presentation. Upper extremity deep vein thr...

All patients who underwent primary total knee arthroplasty (TKA), revision TKA, primary total hip arthroplasty (THA), and revision THA between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 1996, were retrospectively reviewed to determine the incidence of fatal pulmonary emboli. All TKA patients received 1,000 U of intravenous heparin sodium before the tourniquet was inflated and an additional 500 U of intr...