Midterm Prognosis of Patients With Pulmonary Embolism Receiving Catheter‐Directed Thrombolysis or Systemic Thrombolysis: A Nationwide Population‐Based Study

BACKGROUND: This study compared the efficacy and safety between catheter‐directed thrombolysis (CDT) and systemic thrombolysis for patients with acute pulmonary embolism (PE) with midterm follow‐up. METHODS AND RESULTS: We conducted a prospective open cohort study by using data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database for 2001 to 2013. Patients who were first admitted for PE and were treated by either systemic thrombolysis or CDT were included and compared. Inverse probability of treatment weighting, based on the propensity score, was used to mitigate possible selection bias. A total of 145 CDT‐treated and 1158 systemic thrombolysis–treated patients with PE were included. The in‐hospital mortality rate was significantly lower in the CDT group (12.7% versus 21.4%; odds ratio, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.36–0.67) after inverse probability of treatment weighting. No significant differences between the groups were observed for the safety (bleeding) outcomes. In patients who survived the index PE admission, the 1‐year all‐cause mortality rate was significantly lower in the CDT group after inverse probability of treatment weighting (12.2% versus 13.2%; hazard ratio [HR], 0.73; 95% CI, 0.56–0.94). Treatment with CDT was also associated with lower risks of recurrent PE (9.3% versus 17.5%; subdistribution HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.41–0.66). The difference remained through the last follow‐up. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with PE requiring reperfusion therapy, those accepting CDT had lower all‐cause mortality and recurrent PE over both short‐term and midterm follow‐up periods than those receiving systemic thrombolysis. The bleeding risk was similar for both groups. These findings should be cautiously validated in future randomized trials.