It is estimated that 500,000 suffer from pulmonary emboli each year and that 50,000 of those will die. Unfortunately, many of the embolic events are instantly fatal and it is often difficult to make the diagnosis of pulmonary embolus in those who survive the initial event. The clinical presentation of these patients is usually non-specific and the meaning of our diagnostic tests is frequently misunderstood. This multimedia textbook has been divided into 2 sections. The second section contains a series of 30 multimedia cases in which I have been involved either as a pulmonary consultant or as a chest radiologist.
Medical training is an apprenticeship for good reason.
As physicians, we learn about diseases through their variable expression in individual patients. The best clinicians have a wide range of this type of experience to draw on and this allows them to recognize both the common and unusual manifestations of a given disease. I believe that these multimedia cases, taken as a whole, provide a clearer concept of the disease process that we call pulmonary embolus. All rights reserved.