Autopsy Incidence of Pulmonary Embolism in Tuberculosis

¹ The Department of Pathology, Pittsburgh City Home and Hospitals, Mayview, Pennsylvania, and the Department of Pathology, Memorial Hospital, Danville, Virginia.

Pulmonary embolism was found 27 times in 111 consecutive autopsies in subjects with active tuberculosis (24.3 per cent). This compares with an incidence of pulmonary embolism of 23.1 per cent in a series of 634 autopsies in which the 111 cases of tuberculosis were found. Four of the emboli were classified as massive and 23 were regarded as minor. Lung infarction occurred four times.

This high incidence of pulmonary embolism in patients dying with active tuberculosis suggests that proper prophylactic measures to reduce the incidence of pulmonary embolism and the use of anticoagulant therapy such as dicumarol or heparin may play a definite role in the treatment of tuberculosis. Careful laboratory control of the prothrombin and coagulation times would be required in the use of dicumarol or heparin because of the possibility of pulmonary hemorrhage.