Mazdak Tavoly MD

Mazdak Tavoly, who is a senior physician and specialist in emergency medicine at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, is a research fellow in Sykehuset Østfold's research group for thrombosis and hemostasis.

On 20 May, he defended his doctoral thesis "Persistent dyspnea, exercise limitation and impaired health-related quality of life in patients surviving pulmonary embolism", on the long-term effects in patients with proven pulmonary embolism. The debates were conducted digitally, with viewing in the subject library at Sykehuset Ostfold Kalnes.

Blood clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolism) are one of the most common cardiovascular diseases. Recently, individual studies have shown that this disease not only has serious consequences for the patient in the acute phase but can also contribute to further stress in up to half of the patients affected by blood clots in the lungs.

In their thesis, Mazdak Tavoly and colleagues have investigated how many patients with previous pulmonary embolisms still have problems with shortness of breath, reduced functional capacity, and poorer quality of life. They found that half of the patients still had shortness of breath approximately four years after they had been diagnosed with blood clots in the lungs. However, patients with shortness of breath tended to have reduced function and poorer quality of life when comparing the results with the normal population.

Tavoly and his colleagues believe that these findings, which are relatively new in the field of research into the long-term effect of blood clots in the lungs, cannot be explained solely by studying sicker patients. Nor can it be fully explained that these patients have other concurrent illnesses that contribute. The conclusion from the thesis is that this is an area that has not received enough attention in the research world. Tavoly and the co-authors believe that these patients should be investigated more, and further studies should focus on what causes the long-term problems.