That's probably true but really don't wait at all, period.

If you need to go to the ER over the weekend, I certainly wouldn't wait until Monday just for the lesser mortality rates.

There's never a good reason to wait to get a PE treated.

Well there is that.

Yes, you're both right-----but the article wasn't suggesting (nor was I) that you wait. Heavens no!

Perhaps my intentions for posting were misunderstood. It happens.

My comments were regarding the article, not your intentions.

Of course.

I thought this was an april's fools day joke.

While I don't deny that there may be something of a different standard of care over the weekend, I also wonder if a factor which contributes at all is in fact some people's tendency to put of seeking medical attention. I've done it, and I bet a lot more people have as well. Especially when your work week is Monday-Friday, and you know you're not feeling well but you just want to try to get through the week and you think if you're still not feeling well then you'll deal with it after. I mean, you might be feeling pain in your chest and even have some difficulty breathing, but you don't necessarily jump to the conclusion that you've got something potentially life-threatening. I wonder if in fact some patients have put off seeking care, so once they finally do get to the hospital on the weekend they're worse off on arrival than a patient who seeks more immediate care.

That said, I've actually always been very glad my critical moment with PE didn't come on the weekend or even that I needed immediate care overnight, because I've always felt that if it hadn't been at a favorable mid-morning time that things wouldn't have come out as favorably for me, being that it was a tricky case for several reasons, and I'm glad I wasn't in the situation of the doctor trying to work through it all after being called in the middle of the night.

Oh, but diagnostically speaking, I was at the hospital several times during the weekdays, yet I still received terrible care and was told several times that nothing was wrong with me. They didn't realize something was wrong until I was practically dead already, so I think in many cases it just depends on the particulars of who is working when as to the quality of care we get.

My PE was diagnosed/found by a doctor after I'd tried treatments for breathlessness that didn't work. I had really never heard of pulmonary embolism, let alone know what a warning sign might be.

I'm just glad the doctor was on top of her stuff. Otherwise I would have gone home with a couple of inhalers and just continued on as normal.

Right, I think you also have to take into account those kinds of variables, like the number of times you were misdiagnosed, making your situation that much more critical by the time you do go to the ER or go to the ER a second or third time. I suppose variables such as this are what they mean by there needing to be further research to "identify which patient and/or treatment factors account for higher mortality in patients with pulmonary embolism admitted on the weekend."

I was taken in to a&e at 4am in a Sunday morning with my PE. The dr I saw looked absolutely exhausted & was having to deal with a lot of very drunk abusive patients. However, he was amazing and within 30minutes of me being there he had diagnosed a PE. I think you can just be lucky or unlucky with the treatment you receive no matter what day or time you are taken in

I'm one of those who waited until the week-end, for a variety of reasons, mostly because I did not take the symptoms seriously and because 2 previous trips to the ER had not shown anything serious going on, though it was obvious that there was something.

I got to the ER on a Saturday afternoon around 4 pm. Within minutes, I was in the critical unit, had a breathing therapist checking me out, was having an EKG and the doctor was checking me out.

I think that Shilo's on to something: most likely, what happens is that people who wait until the weekend have ignored the symptoms and are likely to be critical, hence the higher mortality rate.

It should be noted that, in my area's hospitals, week-end staff for the ER is the same number as during the week. In out case, you don't want to wait until the night, because, at that point, there is only one doctor available, and that causes huge delays.

Another thing, and I guess it's the same everywhere, they can't do all the diagnostic tests over the week-end. While I could get X-rays and CT scan, I had to wait until the Monday for a heart sonogram. And I'm pretty sure they do not do MRIs over the week-end. If some hospitals do not have technicians for the CT-Scan, then diagnosis could be delayed and result in death.

One thing to be noted, the article also mentioned that patients were more likely to deteriorate and require trombolytic treatment. And, that's one of the things that happened to me: I was better once they started the heparin, but my heart started acting up on the Sunday evening, when they moved me to the trauma room, ready to use trombolytics. Thankfully, it never got worse, and I was better by the Monday afternoon. Now, why this happened, I have no clue, as I was already on anti-coagulants.