Editorial February 2021

Dear friends and colleagues,

The new year has just started, and we still wish you all a healthy, successful and happy new year 2021.  With no doubt this year will bring us many exciting new developments, study results and activities in the fields of pulmonary embolism / pulmonary hypertension.

Currently, there is an increasing interest in catheter-directed embolectomy in acute pulmonary embolism especially when thrombolysis is contraindicated  due to high bleeding risk. We are finalising a survey on interventional treatment of acute pulmonary embolism which has been prepared by EAPCI with the ESC Working Group on Pulmonary Circulation and Right Ventricular Function.  We are exciting to discover how CDT is currently used across the  Europe.  

The ESC Clinical Practice Guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of acute pulmonary embolism (PE) have been published  more than one year. These guidelines need to be implemented into a daily clinical practice.  We are inviting you to participate in two webinars “ESC guidelines on acute pulmonary embolism – practical guidance into clinical practice”. These webinars, guided by evidence-based data, providing up-to-date information on venous thromboembolism, will discuss the implications of the latest ESC Guidelines for clinical practice. The first webinar (8 February) chaired by Prof. Stavros Konstantinides, (Mainz, Germany) is  dedicated to diagnostic and therapeutic challenges in the acute phase of PE of special patients populations: COVID-19 patients (FA Klok, Leiden), and patients with cancer (P.Pruszczyk, Warsaw). The second webinar (11 March) will focus on the challenges of managing PE on the long term. The optimal balance between PE recurrence and major bleeding will be discussed by  Prof. Cecelia Becattini (Perugia, Italy) and FA Klok will present how to deal with post-PE syndrome, which is still underdiagnosed. 

In this edition of the newsletter, we highlight a recent paper entitled “ Pulmonary embolism-related mortality in Northern America: age-sex differences, role of concomitant diseases and call for the recognition of pulmonary embolism as a global cause of death”, Lancet Respir Med 2021,  Please see the detailed comment provided by Dr. Stefano Barco (Mainz, Germany).

We strongly encourage members from our working group to submit abstracts for ESC Congress 2021. As in the past, the WG will offer young researcher awards for the best selected abstracts - please remember the deadline for abstract submission (1 April).

On behalf of the Working Group Nucleus

Piotr Pruszczyk - Chairperson