At-risk patients with blood clots will benefit from Inova Fairfax Hospital’s new pulmonary embolism response team

A  “S.W.A.T.”  Team for Pulmonary Embolism

Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common condition in the United States, with roughly 600,000 cases each year. PE is a vascular emergency, and about one-third of patients who have a PE will die from it. However, if it is recognized and treated early, most patients thrive.

PE occurs when a blood clot — frequently coming from the patient’s leg and caused by deep vein thrombosis — travels through the arteries to the lungs. The clot may prevent the heart from pumping blood into the lungs. As the heart pumps harder and harder against the blockage, it may fail and cause serious damage or even death. PE can occur in healthy patients or those with disorders of blood clotting, many of whom have no symptoms.

A team of doctors at Inova Fairfax Hospital has created a better solution for diagnosing, evaluating and treating pulmonary embolism cases. Key to this new process is the new Inova Pulmonary Embolism Response Team, or I-PERT, which began operating on March 1, 2016.

I-PERT is a team of Inova medical experts from different disciplines who can respond quickly and around-the-clock to evaluate and treat pulmonary embolism patients.

“We have brought together experts from pulmonary medicine, medical critical care services, cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery and interventional radiology, and we evaluate these patients together as a team,” says Alain T. Drooz, MD, of Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Inova Heart and Vascular Institute. “We’ve all studied PE from different educational perspectives and we mesh our knowledge together to determine how to treat patients. This is particularly helpful in very ill patients or in those in whom medical knowledge is evolving rapidly.”

While most PE patients respond well to standard treatments such as anticoagulant medicines, I-PERT is important for those who cannot take blood thinners or in whom the PE is producing a very high risk of death. For those patients, quick evaluation and treatment is critical, and that is why I-PERT team members are on call at all times. “We are literally a SWAT team for pulmonary embolism intervention,” says Dr. Drooz.

Treating pulmonary embolism in a flash

The Inova Pulmonary Embolism Response Team (I-PERT) is available any time, day or night, to evaluate patients at risk for pulmonary embolism (PE). If a doctor suspects that a patient has a PE, these are the steps to activate I-PERT:

1. The doctor determines if the patient meets the criteria for I-PERT activation using an algorithm provided by I-PERT.
2. If I-PERT is activated, the patient will be evaluated and the team members will confer about the case, and issue recommendations.
3. I-PERT will communicate with the referring physician, patient and family members.
4. I-PERT will follow the patient while in the hospital and beyond. A small percentage of patients may need additional treatment while in the hospital.