Appropriate laboratory utilization in diagnosing pulmonary embolism.

Background: The appropriateness of clinical laboratory use in hospital clinical practice is a very debated question. In fact diagnostic tests are essential tools for disease screening or diagnosis but at the same time they represent an important expenditure.

Methods: A quantitative study was conducted in an Italian general hospital with 535 beds and about 27,000 admissions per year. The sample was made of all patients discharged from the hospital with DRG 78 between the period 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2005.

Results: The Emergency Department (ED) discharged 2.9% (116/4009) of patients with pulmonary embolism diagnosis in the year 2005. The percentage of prescription inappropriateness inferred by analysis of all required tests by operative unit was 21.7% (950/4385). The approximate estimate of the economic value of unnecessarily required tests was of 3495 euro. Of these 96.5% (112/116) had enlisting criteria. All haematological and clinical-chemical tests (1295) concerning studied patients were analysed. About 70.4% (93/132) of d-dimer tests were ordered in ED. In the studied patients, unfractionated heparin was administered in 17.8% (20/112) of the cases, low-molecular weight heparin in 79.5% (89/112) and heparin therapy was not administered in 2.7% (three of 112).

Conclusion: This study uses a method to assess the quality of laboratory test orders using results as a tool to estimate the impact of economic resources devolved in executing inappropriate tests.