American Heart Association Launches National Initiative to Improve Pulmonary Embolism Care

The American Heart Association is launching a comprehensive three-year quality improvement initiative to address significant gaps in pulmonary embolism care, supported by Inari, now part of Stryker. This initiative comes as pulmonary embolism (PE) sends more than half a million people to U.S. hospitals annually and kills approximately one in five high-risk patients, according to the American Heart Association's 2025 statistical update.

PE represents the third leading cause of cardiovascular death in the United States, yet the condition remains underdiagnosed, undertreated and inconsistently managed across healthcare systems. The Pulmonary Embolism Quality Improvement Initiative will establish a 20-site national learning collaborative representing urban, rural and under-resourced communities. These diverse care teams will share data, insights and experiences through an "all teach, all learn" approach aimed at improving health outcomes and reducing disparities across systems of care.

"This initiative aims to support the ongoing mission of improving PE care by formally examining the barriers to implementation that hospitals face in the real world," said Jay Giri, M.D., MPH, American Heart Association volunteer and lead author of the American Heart Association's scientific statement on interventional therapies for acute pulmonary embolism. "By applying the specific lens of implementation science, we hope to generate new insights on overcoming system-level challenges to PE care."

The initiative has three primary objectives: identifying knowledge and practice gaps in PE care, developing solutions to known and unknown barriers, and disseminating key insights to inform and support scalable, evidence-based PE care pathways. The findings will be made publicly available, providing new data and potential frameworks to help the entire PE community accelerate their work.

PE is a type of venous thromboembolism (VTE), occurring when a blood clot breaks free, usually from a deep vein in the legs, and becomes lodged in the vessels supplying the lungs. VTE is a potentially life-threatening condition that contributes to up to 100,000 deaths each year in the United States. From 2008 to 2018, PE-related mortality increased, underscoring the urgency of intervention according to research published in JAHA.

"We're proud to support the American Heart Association on this important initiative," said Tim Lanier, president, Stryker, Inari Division. "By supporting the Association's investment in scalable, evidence-based solutions, we can help ensure more patients have access to the best possible treatment regardless of where they live."

The initiative's importance extends beyond immediate patient care, addressing systemic healthcare disparities and building frameworks that could be applied to other cardiovascular conditions. With PE mortality rates increasing over the past decade, this collaborative approach represents a critical step toward standardizing care and improving outcomes for one of the nation's most deadly cardiovascular conditions. More information about pulmonary embolism and related conditions can be found at https://professional.heart.org/en/science-news/interventional-therapies-for-acute-pulmonary-embolism/Commentary and https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.120.016784.