The Pulmonary Embolus Response Team: An Interview With Kenneth Rosenfield, MD

At the 2012 VEITHsymposium, Vascular Disease Management spoke with Kenneth Rosenfield, MD, Section Head for Vascular Medicine and Intervention at Massachusetts General Hospital, about pulmonary embolism treatment at the hospital. Pulmonary embolus, said Dr. Rosenfield, is a national crisis because it is underdiagnosed, it is undertreated, and there is no global understanding of what the best therapy is. Recognizing this, a group of multidisciplinary clinicians came together to form the Pulmonary Embolus Response Team, or the PERT team, at Massachusetts General Hospital. Decisions about what is best for each patient are made by the team. In this video interview, Dr. Rosenfield explains how the PERT team operates. He hopes the team will expand to a national effort with a consortium of PERT centers contributing to a common registry that can be evaluated to improve pulmonary embolus therapy.