Early Systolic Notching for Pulmonary Embolism

A focused echo can go a long way in a patient with a suspected pulmonary embolus (PE). It can be especially valuable in those that are so sick and unstable that you need answers right away. In this way, point-of-care echo has been shown to help to diagnose submassive and massive pulmonary emboli by identifying signs of right heart strain. Echo parameters such as right ventricle diameter and right ventricular function (such as in TAPSE) are often part of the evaluation, but these are not as accurate as we would like. These authors propose a new doppler marker of a submassive or massive PE- enter the Early Systolic Notching pattern. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31056367