Objective:

To determine the prevalence of pulmonary thromboembolism (PET) and identify it's risk factors in patients operated on a scheduled basis, in the general surgery service from the High Specialty Medical Unit Hospital de Especialidades de Puebla, of the Mexican Social Security Institute.

Method:

Descriptive, retrospective and cross sectional study of 52 patients' records with PET and pulmonary angiotomography whose indication was respiratory distress; from 2612 operated patients from November 2015 to March 2018, the sampling was not probabilistic. The statistics was descriptive, with measures of central tendency and dispersion. Fisher test, and Rho Spearman were used.

Results:

There were association between the development of PET and trans-surgical time (p = 0.018), with the D Dimer (p = 0.014), there was correlation between PET and Wells scale (p=0.001) and blood transfusion (p=0.044). Age, gender, body mass index, preoperative diagnosis, thromboprophylaxis, blood transfusion and surgical approach were not risk factors.

Conclusion:

The prevalence of postoperative PET in patients with respiratory distress after surgical procedure is 5.7% and the mortality is 33.3%.