I'd agree and say most people don't require a surgical procedure to have clots removed.

I'd say it is pretty rare (although, as a whole, surgical procedures for clots are becoming slightly more common), just because you're probably one of maybe two people I've seen on these boards who had surgery for a PE. And I've been hanging out here for almost five years!

Just to clarify, I'm assuming you mean that you had surgery using heart-lung bypass machine....if you mean something different, ignore everything I'm about to say.

I didn't have bypass, but I did have the catheter-directed thrombolysis which is probably what you mean by the IV catheter surgery, where they injected clot busting medication directly onto the clots via catheter. Neither surgery is very often used, as it's considered risky in itself and most people can survive PE once they are diagnosed and hospitalized, even in bad cases. For instance, my doctor really didn't expect me to make it through surgery, but he was sure I wouldn't live without it. It's been six years since I had those PEs, and I've been pretty active on this group during that time and still only seen a handful of people come here who had the same surgery I did. I have read about using heart-lung bypass for PE's, but I believe it's much less common even than what I had, usually if the clots are considered severe enough to threaten life but too old to respond to thrombolytic treatment, which only works on newly formed clots. Basically the doctors have to use heart-lung bypass so that they can go and physically remove the clots from the pulmonary arteries, rather than dissolve them as my surgery did.

I'm so sorry for what you've been through, and are probably still going through in recovery. I know that my recovery was extremely difficult, especially in the first few months, and you had a more difficult surgery than I did. It was so hard, but I can promise you that things do get better even if that seems impossible. Welcome to our group, although I'm sorry of course that you have reason to be here.

Yes I did have heart-lung bypass. I have tried to get answers on the internet about recovery and got nothing. I asked the surgeon and I got the same. I finally cornered my cardiologist and he told me that it would be about six months no heavy lifting and then about a year until I am back to my new "normal". It was nice to get some straight answers. The good/bad of the situation is that I am 40 and that is probably why I survived. I also had one of the best surgeons in the southeast.

I underwent a pulmonary endarterectomy in June to remove clots