Methods and Results— In this prospective multicenter study, 220 patients with initial suspicion of having acute aortic dissection were enrolled, of whom 87 were diagnosed with acute aortic dissection and 133 with other final diagnoses, including myocardial infarction, angina, pulmonary embolism, and other uncertain diagnoses. D-dimer was markedly elevated in patients with acute aortic dissection. Analysis according to control disease, type of dissection, and time course showed that the widely used cutoff level of 500 ng/mL for ruling out pulmonary embolism also can reliably rule out aortic dissection, with a negative likelihood ratio of 0.07 throughout the first 24 hours.
Conclusion— D-dimer levels may be useful in risk stratifying patients with suspected aortic dissection to rule out aortic dissection if used within the first 24 hours after symptom onset.
As with VTE, although the negative predictive power is good, the positive predictive power is poor.
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