Diagnosis of Pulmonary Embolism

To the Editor: The Clinical Problem-Solving case presented by Yu et al. (June 4 issue) 1 regarding the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary embolism did not address a recently developed diagnostic technique for the evaluation of pulmonary emboli that can obviate the need for angiography. Spiral computed tomographic (CT) scanning of the pulmonary arteries for the diagnosis of central emboli has been performed over the past few years with high accuracy. 2 , 3 The accuracy of spiral CT for the diagnosis of peripheral emboli is less than that for central emboli; the clinical importance of peripheral emboli is controversial. To the Editor: . . .