Background: Benefit of thrombolytic therapy in patients with massive pulmonary embolism (PE) has been proven. Evidence supporting benefit in clinical outcomes of this approach in the subgroup of patients with submassive PE is lacking.
Objective: The primary objective was to determine the impact of thrombolysis on overall survival in patients with submassive PE. Secondary outcomes included bleeding, thrombotic complications, improvement on parameters of right ventricular strain and all cause-mortality.
Methods: A search strategy was conducted in MEDLINE (OVID), EMBASE, LILACS and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) from inception to nowadays. Search was also conducted in other databases and unpublished literature. Clinical trials were included without language restrictions. The risk of bias was evaluated with the Cochrane Collaboration's tool. We performed a meta-analysis with a fixed effect model according to the heterogeneity. PROSPERO registration number is CRD42019128229.
Results: Twelve studies were included in the qualitative and quantitative analysis. 2,564 patients were found among the twelve studies. Risk of bias was assessed mostly as low or unclear risk among the study items. The risk ratio (RR) for all-cause mortality was 1.00 95% CI (0.77 to1.30). The RR of total bleeding and major bleeding were 2.72 95% CI (1.58 to4.69) and 2.17 95% CI (1.03 to4.55), respectively, finding higher risk in thrombolytic therapy. For stroke the RR was 2.22 95% CI (0.17 to28.73), and for recurrent PE the RR was 0.56 95% CI (0.23 to1.37), finding no differences regarding these outcomes. Unfortunately, there were no results reported about overall survival in any of the studies.
Conclusion: In patients with submassive PE, the risk of bleeding is higher when thrombolysis is used. There is no significant difference between thrombolysis and anticoagulation in recurrence of PE, stroke, and all-cause mortality
No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
