The incidence of out-of-hospital fatal pulmonary embolism (PE) is more than three times higher in black people than in white or Hispanic people

Black and Hispanic people with fatal PE also died at a significantly younger age than white people with the same cause of death. The majority of deaths (58.2%) were among black people, followed by white people (25.1%), and Hispanic people (15.6%). The race-adjusted incidence rate of out-of-hospital fatal PE (per 100,000 people per year) was more than three times higher for black people than for white and Hispanic people, at 3.73 versus 1.15 and 0.93, respectively. Those with fatal PE were between two and 10 times more likely to carry the prothrombin G20210A mutation than ethnically matched controls, which suggests that this mutation might be associated with a higher risk for developing acute fatal PE.