Nelson, C. S. (1974). Thorax, 29, 134-137. Cardiac and pulmonary fat embolectomy for suspected fat embolus. There is no specific treatment of fat embolism, whether the embolism is predominantly cerebral, pulmonary, renal or mesenteric. A 46-year-old man had fractured his right femur for the third time in December 1971. Seventy hours later he suddenly developed the cardiovascular, respiratory, a...

Introduction Pulmonary embolism is a challenging critical cardiovascular disease with high morbidity and mortality. Surgical embolectomy has favorable results in patients with massive pulmonary embolism. Aim To study the outcome of embolectomy in patients with massive pulmonary embolism. Material and methods In this single-center, retrospective study, 36 patients including 14 male and 22 fe...

BACKGROUND Despite the improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of acute pulmonary embolism, it is yet a common clinical problem. The actual role of open embolectomy has not been well understood. The present report aimed to extrapolate the outcome of early open pulmonary embolectomy in a number of patients with acute (sub) massive pulmonary embolism (AMPE/ASMPE). METHODS A prospective study...

Pulmonary tumor embolism can be a cause of respiratory failure in patients with cancer even though it occurs rarely. We describe a 56-year-old man who underwent a pulmonary tumor embolectomy using cardiopulmonary bypass on beating heart combined with inferior vena cava embolectomy and right radical nephrectomy. Aggressive surgical treatment in this severe case is necessary not only to reduce th...

An otherwise healthy 48-year-old woman presented in respiratory extremis from massive pulmonary embolism and promptly arrested. She underwent open-chest cardiopulmonary resuscitation followed by portable partial cardiopulmonary bypass and embolectomy but could not be resuscitated. Massive pulmonary embolism is frequently a desperate situation, but aggressive therapy with thrombolysis or embolec...

Since the first report of successful "late" embolectomy for recurrent pulmonary embolism,' a number of patients have been described with significant pulmonary hypertension where clinical improvement associated with lowering of pulmonary artery pressure has followed removal of extensive, well-organised thrombo-embolic material from major pulmonary vessels.2 The following case history illustrates...

BACKGROUND Acute pulmonary embolism confers a high mortality rate despite advances in diagnosis and therapy. Thrombolysis is often effective but has a high frequency of major bleeding complications, especially intracranial hemorrhage. Therefore, we liberalized our criteria for acute pulmonary embolectomy and considered operating on patients with anatomically extensive pulmonary embolism and con...