Elevated D-dimer is not always pulmonary embolism

AbstractSerum D-dimer is elevated in several chest emergencies, including Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS), Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) and Acute Aortic Dissection (AAD). Because of its simplicity and easy availability its use beyond the exclusion of VTE has grown in recent years. There is an increasing trend towards using the test to exclude AAD, where there are no other sensitive screening tests.We present a patient suspected to have pulmonary embolism (PE) based on chest pain and elevated D-dimer, gets a computed tomography with angiogram (CTA) and turns out to have an AAD