Predictive Capability of Cardiopulmonary and Exercise Parameters From Day 1 to 6 Months After Acute Pulmonary Embolism.

We hypothesized that the slope of relation ventilation to carbon dioxide output (E/CO2-slope) could be predictive already during the very first days after submassive pulmonary embolism (PE) to right ventricular systolic pressure (RV by echocardiography) after 6 months. We evaluated 21 hemodynamically stable patients at admittance, at days 3, 7, 90, and 180 by cardiopulmonary exercise testing and echocardiography. E/CO2-slope (48.4 ± 10.8) decreased within the first week (43.0 ± 9.8 at day 7) and normalized until follow-up at 6 months (35.0 ± 11.3;  < 10), p(a-ET)CO remained abnormal between days 1 and 3 (5.0 ± 3.9 to 6.7 ± 5.3 mmHg). RV declined from 41.7 ± 14.3 to 26.3±13.1 mmHg ( < 10) at 6 months. E/CO2-slope (²= 0.27;  < .02) and RV (² = 0.28;  = .03) at day 7 correlated with RV at 6 months. pCO, pO, D/T were not related to RV after 6 months. RV 6 months after acute PE is positively correlated with the E/CO2-slope at day 7.