Helical CT for the evaluation of acute pulmonary embolism.

OBJECTIVE: In this article, we review the current role of CT pulmonary angiography and indirect CT venography for the evaluation of pulmonary thromboembolic disease.

CONCLUSION: With advances in MDCT technology, evaluation of pulmonary thromboembolic disease can now be performed with combined CT pulmonary angiography and CT venography as a "one-stop-shopping" test. CT pulmonary angiography is cost-effective, is accurate, has high interobserver agreement, and has an added advantage of detecting other life-threatening diseases in the chest that mimic pulmonary embolism.