Towards evidence based emergency medicine: best BETs from the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Accuracy of combining clinical probability score and simpliRED D-dimer for diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.

A short cut review was carried out to establish whether bedside clinical examination and simpliRED D-dimer are sufficiently sensitive to rule out pulmonary embolus. A total of 272 papers were found using the reported search, of which five presented the best evidence to answer the clinical question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of these best papers are tabulated. A clinical bottom line is stated.