Acute pulmonary embolism (PE) is a common and often catastrophic disease. Early diagnosis and treatment of PE is im-portant, however, prompt diagnosis is difficult due to nonspecific clinical manifestations. On the other hand, syncope may develop as a presenting symptom of PE, and defecation activity could trigger PE. In Korea, PE associated with defecation has not been previously reported. We report on a case of acute massive PE presenting as defecation syncope in a 26-year-old female with a serous borderline tumor of the ovary.

Syncope is a common symptom, with 15% to 25% of children and adolescents experiencing at least one syncopal episode by young adulthood. In most cases, syncope is a symptom of benign diseases however may be a symptom of severe cardiac disease that results in sudden death. The purpose of this study is to analyze the etiologies and clinical characteristics of syncope in children and adolescents. We retroprospectively analyzed 51 patients with syncope. A total of 51 patients were included in the study and the ratio of males to female was 1: 1.04. The mean patient age was 12.7±3.1 years. Abrupt standing was the most common state of patients with syncopal attack. The etiologies of syncope were noncardiac syncope (60.7%), cardiac syncope (2%), neuropsychiatric syncope (25.5%), and unknown (11.8%). Abnormality of the head-up tilt test was more common in noncardiac syncope than the others [38.7% (12/31) vs 5% (1/20) (p=0.007)]. Further, EEG is a useful diagnostic test for neuropychiatric syncope [41.6% (5/12) vs 2.7% (1/36) (p=0.002)]. Therefore, detailed history taking and physical examinations were useful tools to diagnose the etiology of sycope. The head-up tilt test is an effective diagnostic test in noncardiac syncope and EEG is a valuable test in neuropychiatric syncope, especially in seizure.