Successful treatment of massive pulmonary embolism with prolonged catheter-directed thrombolysis.

This is a case report of a young woman who presented with an extensive pulmonary embolism and echocardiographic evidence of right ventricular dysfunction. Although hemodynamically stable, the patient's clinical condition failed to improve with standard heparin anticoagulation. Successful local catheter-directed thrombolysis was performed over an extended period of 48 h with regular monitoring of response to therapy by computed tomography-pulmonary angiography and echocardiography. To our knowledge, treatment of a pulmonary embolism by catheter-directed thrombolytic infusion over an extended period of 48 h has not previously been described.