Investigation of relationship between blood hemoglobin level and acute pulmonary embolism in emergency setting

Introduction: Pulmonary embolism is characterized by abnormal clot formation in the venous system and the blockage in the pulmonary arteries caused by that clot. In the literature, there are studies showing the relationship between coagulation, and blood viscosity, hematocrit and hemoglobin. In these studies, there are findings suggesting that when blood viscosity decreases due to low hemoglobin level, secretion of anti-thrombotic mediators from endothelial cells decreases, which might result in thrombosis. Materials and Methods: This study included 402 cases (201 patients, 201 controls). In the study, the matched case-control method was used. Patients with pulmonary embolism over the age of eighteen years were compared with the control group in terms of gender, hemoglobin, hematocrit, mean erythrocyte corpuscular volume, red cell distribution width, thrombocyte values. Results: While the mean blood hemoglobin level was 11.6 ± 2.0 g /dl in the group with pulmonary embolism, control group mean hemoglobin level was 13.0 ± 1.7 g /dl (p 0.001). Conclusion: This study obtained results which indicated that low serum hemoglobin levels could be related to pulmonary embolism. © 2013 Japan International Cultural Exchange Foundation and Japan Health Sciences University