Creation of an Interdisciplinary Pulmonary Embolism Treatment Team
Pulmonary embolism, an often fatal complication of venous thrombosis, affects people of all ages and annually in the USA 500-600,000 new cases are recorded, leading to 100,000 deaths per year.
Recent guidelines from the European Society of Cardiology encourage the creation of PERT (Pulmonary Embolism Response Team) teams aimed at accessing advanced therapies (systemic thrombolysis, catheter thrombolysis, percutaneous thrombectomy, surgical thrombectomy, ECMO, etc.).
At the Athens Medical Center, and for the first time in our country, an interdisciplinary team for the treatment of pulmonary embolism (PERT – Pulmonary Embolism Response Team) has been created, certified by the American PERT Consortium Organization based at the Mass General Hospital of Harvard Medical School.
The Athens Medical Center is now one of the 5 certified centers in Europe and aims to become a reference center in the treatment of acute pulmonary embolism (and its subsequent consequences).
The model of an interdisciplinary Pulmonary Embolism team at the Athens Medical Center will integrate the expertise of all the specialties involved to provide high-level diagnostic and therapeutic services.
The first meeting of the group was organized by Emeritus Professor of Vascular Surgery, National University of Athens, Mr. Christos Liapis, and Professor of Vascular Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, USA, Mr. Efthimios Avgerinos.
The organizational meeting was attended by fellow pulmonologists, pathologists, cardiologists, hematologists, intensivists, hematologists, vascular surgeons, cardiac surgeons and interventional radiologists (alphabetical order):
Th. Alexiou, A. Alexopoulos, A. Viskos, P. Doukas, A. Eleftheriou, Ch. Kouroumpetsis, Th. Bisdas, G. Papaioannou, A. Pigaditou, Ch. Pittaros, A. Roumbelakis, E. Handrinou
