What happened? Acute PE.

He got here out of the room – slightly stuffy, with a respiratory rate of 28 and shallow respiration. His O2 saturation was 95%. He was a young guy, 32 years old, with no prior medical or surgical history. After I got him into the ICU room, I went to the nurses’ station to write down an admission assessment. The doctors were on the bedside ending up a physical exam. Suddenly, the alarms began going off like crazy. I bumped into the room and immediately began pumping 100% oxygen into the patient. A flurry of activity began – intubation, heparin bolus, and IV – before I knew it, someone was starting CPR. Wow – what was happening? How could he have lost consciousness so quickly?

I remembered this patient after I examine acute pulmonary embolism within the April/June issue of Pulmonary Embolism (PE). Pulmonary embolism (PE) has all the time been probably the most scaries for me. When the patient got here in with the diagnosis of “rule out PE,” I used to be nervous; the “car ride” to nuclear medicine made me nervous!

Fortunately, admissions like this weren’t an everyday occurrence. You can imagine the sudden death of a young patient had a huge effect on me and the remainder of the team that day. I used to be a reasonably recent nurse and the small print of what happened were a bit hazy in my memory. What I remember clearly is that I spoke to this recent admission for some time and after some time (or so I assumed) he began coding.

PE occurs when a pulmonary artery or certainly one of its branches becomes occluded by a clot that originates somewhere within the venous system or on the appropriate side of the center. The clot generally breaks free from its site of origin and travels to the lungs. In the lungs, it blocks vessels and causes impaired gas exchange, resulting in hypoxia. Symptoms of PE are frequently nonspecific—rapid respiration, crackles, tachycardia, cough, chest pain, dizziness, anxiety, and shortness of breath. Patients may additionally present with frothy, pink sputum or hemoptysis.

I’ve listed some resources below should you’d prefer to learn more about PE. You may search “pulmonary embolism” on NursingCenter to see all of our journal content on the subject.

Resources:

Gay, S. (2010). The internal view of venous thromboembolism.

McLenon, M. (2012). Acute pulmonary embolism.

Moz, T. (2008). Pulmonary embolism: greater than just shortness of breath.