Pulmonary Embolism??

[Luisemol23]

Hi curious to know if anyone else has experienced a pulmonary embolism in pregnancy? I’m currently 22 weeks pregnant with my second and been told tonight in the hospital that due to my severe shortness of breath and chest pain etc that I have a suspected PE and will have to get blood tests tomorrow to confirm this or not. Just looking to know if anyone else has been through the same? I genuinely took my shortness of breath as just pregnancy causing issues but today I had enough of the shortness of breath and took myself to urgent care and this was the result :/

At this point its just suspected
If its confirmed, your best advice is to ask them what the next steps are

It can be many things, They always seem to jump on a PE
Iv been ‘suspected’ to have one a number of times and it never has been one

Good Luck OP

Yeah I do agree that they do suspect it a lot my own mum had a suspected one but blood tests said otherwise🙃 was the only thing they could think of causing the shortness of breath as everything else was perfect except elevated blood pressure but that’s already being controlled this pregnancy due to pre eclampsia previous pregnancy!
Thankyou hopefully it’s not a PE🤞🏼

Are they doing a CT? They have to suspect it, as not investigating the possibility can obviously have dire consequences. But the blood test is inaccurate in pregnancy so you need imaging and hopefully they've suggested this too. Hope it is out ruled and you're feeling better soon.

Thrombosis UK are the people for this and have lots of info.
https://thrombosisuk.org/

They just mentioned a blood test, d dimer I believe. No mention of a CT etc although I expect that if the test is positive they may do more tests as I know the blood test can’t say where the clot would be just that there is one:/ thankyou as much as I would obviously like it not to be that it would make me feel better in a sense knowing there’s actually a reason for how I’m feeling and not just an unknown reason. Can’t win in this situation unfortunately 🥲

Thankyou for this !

@Luisemol23 just to let you know, due to pregnancy d-dimers are wholly inaccurate and cannot be used to confirm blood clots pregnancy, they’re nearly always positive and rarely is that an accurate result.
If they strongly suspect a PE, you’ll need a CTPA.

Is It your GP doing the bloods?
athey could always discuss it with the obstetric team at the hospital where you’re booked

Oh god really? I wonder why this wasn’t mentioned that’s crazy? No they want me to go to a&e I was supposed to last night after urgent care but I have a 2y/o who I could only get watched later today so I can actually go to a&e. I’m actually under consultant led care this pregnancy too due to pre eclampsia in my previous pregnancy I suppose I could maybe contact my consultant about this also

@Luisemol23 if you’re in the UK, no need to contact your consultant. They’ll get told if they need to.
You could call your maternity triage or assessment centre, they often say to go to A&E first, but with a positive d-dimer, you’ll get the confirmation investigations anyway

Im a midwife and I agree d dimers aren’t reliable in pregnancy, lots of false positives. We don’t use the blood test locally and just do the CTPA scan. Maybe they think if the blood test is negative then that’s reassuring, I don’t think you get false negatives?

my daughter had a PE in her early 20s and had some shortness of breath and also terrible chest pain. Her d dimer was high and then clots seen on scan.

have they started you on heparin injection? Because they really should until it’s ruled out.