Symptoms, location and prognosis of pulmonary embolism.

Background And Objective: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common disease with variable symptoms and high overall mortality. The clinical relevance of the extent of PE is still debatable, and the role of anticoagulation in patients with subsegmental involvement has been contested. Our objective is to describe the clinical details of patients with PE in our hospital and to analyze their prognosis based on the extent of the disease.

Cholesterol in pleural exudates depends mainly on increased capillary permeability.

Pleural fluid (PF) cholesterol is a useful parameter to differentiate between pleural transudates and exudates, although the pathophysiologic mechanisms for its increase in exudates are not fully understood. We aim to elucidate the cause of this increase by analyzing the levels of cholesterol-high-density lipoproteins (HDLs), low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), apolipoprotein A (ApoA), and apolipoprotein B (ApoB)-in PF and blood as well as the number of leucocytes and red cells in the PF. We studied 259 patients with pleural effusion (57 transudates and 202 exudates).