Table 29.

—[Section 5.5] Summary of Findings: Early Discharge vs Standard Discharge in the Treatment of Acute PE^a,b,256,257

Outcomes	No. of Participants (Studies), Follow-up	Quality of the Evidence (GRADE)	Relative Effect (95% CI)	Anticipated Absolute Effects
				Risk With Standard Discharge	Risk Difference With Early Discharge (95% CI)
Mortality	471 (2 studies), 3 mo	Moderatec,d due to imprecision	RR 0.58 (0.17-1.97)	26 per 1,000	11 fewer per 1,000 (from 22 fewer to 26 more)
Nonfatal recurrent PE	471 (2 studies), 3 mo	Moderatec,d due to imprecision	RR 1.23 (0.25-6.03)	9 per 1,000	2 more per 1,000 (from 7 fewer to 44 more)
Major bleeding	471 (2 studies), 3 mo	Moderatec,d due to imprecision	RR 2.74 (0.45-16.71)	4 per 1,000	8 more per 1,000 (from 2 fewer to 69 more)
QOL not reported	…	…	…	…	…
PTS not reported	…	…	…	…	…

The basis for the assumed risk (eg, the median control group risk across studies) is provided in footnotes. The corresponding risk (and its 95% CI) is based on the assumed risk in the comparison group and the relative effect of the intervention (and its 95% CI). Working group grades of evidence are as follow: High quality, further research is very unlikely to change our confidence in the estimate of effect; moderate quality, further research is likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and may change the estimate; low quality, further research is very likely to have an important impact on our confidence in the estimate of effect and is likely to change the estimate; very-low quality, we are very uncertain about the estimate. See Table 1 and 3 legends for expansion of abbreviations.

^aThe two RCTs included only patients with low risk: risk classes I or II on the Pulmonary Embolism Severity Index in Aujesky et al²¹⁶; low risk on clinical prediction rule by Uresandi et al.²⁵⁸

^bMean length of hospital stay: 3.4 (SD 1.1) vs 9.3 (SD 5.7) d in Otero et al²⁵⁶ and 0.5 (SD 1.0) vs 3.9 (SD 3.1) d in Aujesky et al²⁵⁷; low risk on clinical prediction rule by Uresandi et al²⁵⁸ in Otero et al.

^cOtero et al²⁵⁶: allocation concealed; no patients lost to follow-up; intention-to-treat analysis; no blinding of outcome assessors reported; study stopped early because the rate of short-term mortality was unexpectedly high in the early discharge group (2 [2.8%] vs 0 [0%]). Aujesky et al²⁵⁷: unclear whether allocation was concealed; three (1%) patients had missing outcome data; intention-to-treat analysis; blinding of outcome adjudicators; no early stoppage.

^dCI includes both values suggesting no effect and values suggesting appreciable harm or appreciable benefit.