Abstract
BACKGROUND: For patients with high-risk pulmonary artery embolism (PE), catheter-directed therapies pose a viable alternative treatment option to systemic thrombolysis or anticoagulation. Right now, there are multiple devices available which have been proven to be safe and effective in lower-risk settings. There is, however, little data comparing their efficacies in high-risk PE. METHODS: We performed a retrospective, single-center study on patients with high-risk PE undergoing catheter interventional treatment. Patients receiving large-bore catheter thrombectomy were compared to patients receiving alternative treatment forms. RESULTS: Of the 20 patients included, 9 received large-bore thrombectomy, and 11 received alternative interventional treatments. While the baseline characteristics were comparable between the two groups, periprocedural and in-hospital mortality tended to be significantly lower with large-bore thrombectomy when compared to other treatment forms (0 vs. 55% and 33 vs. 82%, p = 0.07 and 0.01, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: In this small, retrospective study, large-bore thrombectomy was associated with lower mortality as compared to alternative treatment forms. Future prospective research is needed to corroborate these findings.