Abstract
To the Editor:
Carson and his colleagues report (May 7 issue)* an in-hospital mortality rate of 9.5 percent among patients with pulmonary emboli diagnosed by angiography. On the basis of clinical findings, autopsy results, and death-certificate data, they deduced that in only a small fraction of these deaths (10.5 percent) was pulmonary embolism the "immediate or underlying cause of death." They conclude that pulmonary embolism is an uncommon cause of death, with a mortality rate of 2.5 percent. This conclusion does not appear to be justified by the data. The inclusion criteria used in the study were justifiably strict. The . . .