Journal of thrombosis and haemostasis : JTH
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J. Thromb. Haemost. · Feb 2011
The pulmonary embolism rule-out criteria (PERC) rule does not safely exclude pulmonary embolism.
The Pulmonary Embolism Rule-out Criteria (PERC) rule is a clinical diagnostic rule designed to exclude pulmonary embolism (PE) without further testing. We sought to externally validate the diagnostic performance of the PERC rule alone and combined with clinical probability assessment based on the revised Geneva score. ⋯ Our results suggest that the PERC rule alone or even when combined with the revised Geneva score cannot safely identify very low risk patients in whom PE can be ruled out without additional testing, at least in populations with a relatively high prevalence of PE.