Thrombolysis in hemodynamically unstable patients: still underused: a review based on multicenter prospective registries on acute pulmonary embolism

Hemodynamically unstable pulmonary embolism (PE) represents a complex and life-threatening event with a highly variable course and poor prognosis in the short-term period. Despite an immediate reperfusion treatment is recommended in these patients, previous investigations have reported a lower use of systemic thrombolysis (ST). The aim of the present review is to assess and describe the real use of ST in hemodynamically unstable patients with acute PE enrolled in prospective—multicenter registries between the 1990 and 2018. Over that period, 1216 articles were identified in Pubmed. After excluding the duplicates obtained using the different searching MeSH (n = 703), 513 articles were screened and then excluded for not meeting inclusion criteria due the article type, design of the study or no English language. As result, 13 articles were assessed for eligibility and carefully reviewed. Finally, five studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. The identified study registries enrolled prospectively 41364 consecutive patients with acute PE between the 1993 and the 2016. Among these, 2168 (5.2%) were hemodynamically unstable at presentation. ST was administered in 29.7% (n = 645) of patients while catheter-direct treatment (CDT) was used only in 1.4% (n = 32) of cases. Conversely, surgical pulmonary embolectomy (SPE) was adopted as reperfusion treatment in 39 patients (1.7%). Intriguingly, the 68% of patients not received a reperfusion treatment despite they were hemodynamically unstable at admission. Despite the internationals guidelines recommendations, a prompt reperfusion is performed only in one on three hemodynamically unstable patients with acute PE.