Clinical Characteristics and Risk Factors of Patients with Pulmonary Infarction Secondary to Intermediate and High-risk Pulmonary Embolism Misdiagnosed as Pneumonia

Background Although the number of case reports on pulmonary infarction (PI) secondary to pulmonary embolism (PE) is increasing in recent years, its misdiagnosis remains common, mainly as pneumonia. In patients with intermediate and high-risk pulmonary embolism, delays in diagnosis and timely treatment would lead to poor prognosis. Objective By analyzing the pneumonia-misdiagnosed cases of patients with PI, we summarized their clinical characteristics and related risk factors, and constructed a multivariate joint model to improve the accurate diagnosis rate at early stage. Methods This retrospective study included the hospitalized patients with pulmonary embolism at the First Affiliated Hospital of USTC from January 2017 to December 2023. In the group of pneumonia-misdiagnosed patients with intermediate to high-risk PI, we analyzed the clinical characteristics and compared the differences between the misdiagnosed groups and control group. Furthermore, using a multivariate Logistic regression analysis, we explo