The elderly are at high risk for pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE). Evidence shows that the prevalence of PTE is increased during aging, and its mortality, recurrence and hemorrhage rate are extremely high in the elderly than in the young people. Therefore, as an important global health issue, the elderly PTE draws attention from clinicians all over the world. In the past 2 decades, great progress has been achieved in the diagnosis and treatment of elderly PTE, including the establishment of new diagnostic strategy (Wells score and modified Geneva score), the application of age-adjusted D-dimer cutoff levels for excluding PTE, the use of new oral anticoagulants for older patients, etc. In this article, we mainly summarized the progress in the diagnosis and treatment of PTE and hoped this would be helpful to Chinese pulmonary vascular clinicians.