Improving diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care for pulmonary embolism

Pulmonary embolism (PE), a type of blood clot in the lungs, sends more than half a million people to U.S. hospitals each year - and kills about one in five high-risk patients, according to the American Heart Association 2025 statistical update. PE is the third leading cause of cardiovascular death in the U.S. While progress has been made in PE care, pulmonary embolism remains underdiagnosed, undertreated and inconsistently managed.

To address these gaps in care, the American Heart Association, devoted to changing the future to a world of healthier lives for all, is launching a three-year quality improvement initiative, supported by Inari, now part of Stryker, to better understand barriers and advance best practices for pulmonary embolism diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care.

The Pulmonary Embolism Quality Improvement Initiative will convene a 20-site national learning collaborative representing urban, rural and under-resourced communities. These diverse care teams will share data, insights and experiences through an "all teach, all learn" approach aimed at improving health outcomes and reducing disparities across systems of care. The new initiative aims to:

• Identify knowledge and practice gaps in PE care
• Develop solutions to known and unknown barriers
• Disseminate key insights to inform and support scalable, evidence-based PE care pathways

"This initiative aims to support the ongoing mission of improving PE care by formally examining the barriers to implementation that hospitals face in the real world," said Jay Giri, M.D., MPH, American Heart Association volunteer and lead author of the American Heart Association's scientific statement on interventional therapies for acute pulmonary embolism. Giri is also director of the Cardiovascular Catheterization Laboratories at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; director of the Penn Cardiovascular Outcomes, Quality & Evaluative Research Center; and associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. "By applying the specific lens of implementation science, we hope to generate new insights on overcoming system-level challenges to PE care. We will make these findings publicly available, providing new data and potential frameworks to help the entire PE community accelerate their vital work."

PE is a type of venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clots in the veins. PE occurs when a blood clot breaks free, usually from a deep vein in the legs, and becomes lodged in the vessels supplying the lungs. VTE is a potentially life-threatening condition that contributes to up to 100,000 deaths each year in the United States. From 2008 to 2018, PE-related mortality increased, underscoring the urgency of intervention.

We're proud to support the American Heart Association on this important initiative. By supporting the Association's investment in scalable, evidence-based solutions, we can help ensure more patients have access to the best possible treatment regardless of where they live."

 Tim Lanier, president, Stryker, Inari Division