Table 1—

Quality assessment

First author [Ref.]	Year	Design	Consecutive patients	Control group	PE patients n	Follow-up		Quality score
First author [Ref.]	Year	Design	Consecutive patients	Control group	PE patients n	Duration months	Lost patients n (%)	Quality score
Kovacs 27	2000	Prospective cohort	Yes	No	108	3	0	3
Beer 19	2003	Prospective cohort	No	Yes	43	3	0	3
Buller 20	2003	Prospective inception cohort	No	No	158	1–2 weeks	0	2
Lim 29	2003	Retrospective case note review	No	No	70	6	0	2
Siragusa 35	2005	Prospective cohort	Yes	Yes	36	6	0	4
Wells 37	2005	Prospective inception cohort	No	No	90	3	0	2
Ong 32	2005	Retrospective database- and record-based review	Yes	No	130	3	1	3
Ageno 9	2005	Retrospective record-based review	No	Yes	23	3	0	2
Olsson 31	2006	Prospective cohort	No	No	102	13	2 (2)	3
Davies 22	2007	Prospective cohort	No	No	157	3	1 (0.6)	3
Lui 30	2007	Retrospective record-based review	Yes	No	21	1–2 weeks	0	2

PE: pulmonary embolism.