Abstract
Background: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a clinical condition frequently encountered in the emergency department (ED), with a high and early mortality rate. ED triage determines the priority of further evaluation of care at the time of patient arrival. Very little is known about the specific role of ED triage in PE. We aimed to evaluate (1) whether the current five-level triage (5LT) system can identify patients with PE and differently prioritize them for medical evaluation and (2) the discriminatory capacity of simplified revised Geneva score (SRGS) toward PE diagnosis when calculated by triage nurses. Methods: A retrospective chart review on ED patients who underwent computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) in 2023. Based on the CTPA report, patients were categorized into two subgroups: CTPA PE-negative and CTPA PE-positive. We then searched for correlations between PE diagnosis and triage priority level, time from triage to medical evaluation, SRGS, and National Early Warning Score 2 (NEWS2). Results: Of the 196 patients included in the analysis (age 71.1 ± 16.9), 45 (23.0%) were CTPA PE-positive (26 proximal PE and 19 distal PE). There was no correlation between the assigned triage color code and the CTPA results. Although we found a statistically significant difference in the prevalence of CTPA-confirmed PE according to the results of the SRGS (p = 0.014), the SRGS calculated at the time of triage showed a poor prediction accuracy for subsequent PE diagnosis (area under curve [AUC] 0.608). NEWS2 was significantly associated with the triage-assigned priority level (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The current 5LT was unable to differently prioritize patients with or without PE, and it seems unlikely that implementation of SRGS in the triage nurse evaluation will significantly improve the prioritization of patients with suspected PE for medical evaluation. Nonetheless, application of SRGS in triage evaluation may improve the appropriateness of the subsequent clinical pathway for PE diagnosis and risk stratification.