• Zhongyi Chen, Simon Deblois, Kevin Toporowicz, Irina Boldeanu, Marie-Odile Francoeur, Manel Sadouni, Luigi Lepanto, and Carl Chartrand-Lefebvre.
• Department of Radiology, Centre Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), 1051 Sanguinet Street, Montréal, QC, H2X 0C1, Canada.
• BMC Res Notes. 2019 Jan 18; 12 (1): 41.

ObjectiveTo assess computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) positive yield rate for pulmonary embolism (PE) in a Canadian academic tertiary center.ResultsThis one-center retrospective cross-sectional study includes from 5565 (model 1) to 5296 (model 2) patients that were evaluated for suspected PE in 2015, among which 1331 (23.9% (model 1) to 25.1% (model 2)) underwent CTPA. Mean age of CTPA patients was 60.2 ± 16.6 years, of which 575 were males (43.2%). Two hundred eleven CTPA examinations were positive for PE, giving a CTPA positive yield rate of 15.9% (95% CI (13.93-17.87)). One hundred and thirteen (8.1%) CTPA were considered indeterminate, and eleven were considered nondiagnostic (0.8%). Among the 211 CTPA positive for PE, 67 (32%) were proximal emboli, 98 (47%) were segmental emboli and 44 (21%%) were subsegmental emboli. In conclusion, in this retrospective study done in a Canadian academic tertiary center, we report a positive rate of 15.9% for PE detection with CTPA, which is above the generally accepted lower threshold of 10% for the yield of CTPA.

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