Tag Archives: pulmonary arterial hypertension

European Society of Cardiology congress 2018, held in Munich Professor Jolien Roos-Hesselink, said: “Pregnancy is safe for most women with heart disease but for some it is too risky. Our study shows that fewer women with heart disease die or have heart failure during pregnancy than 10 years ago. However, nearly one in 10 women with pulmonary arterial hypertension died during pregnancy or early post-partum.” She added that pre-pregnancy counselling is crucial to identify women who should be advised against pregnancy, for instance in those with severe valvular heart disease, and to discuss the risks, options and to initiate timely treatment

Diagnosis can be challenging as its symptoms are often non-specific: they may include breathlessness, fatigue, weakness, angina, syncope and abdominal distension. In the mid-1980s, before the availability of ‘targeted’ therapy, median life expectancy from diagnosis in patients with idiopathic PAH (formerly termed primary pulmonary hypertension [PPH]) was only 2.8 years.3 In 1996, continuous intravenous prostacyclin (epoprostenol) was the first drug to demonstrate outcome benefit in PAH.4 Subsequently, over the past ten years, randomised, placebo-controlled trials of other prostacyclin analogues, endothelin receptor antagonists and phospho

Figure 1: NYHA Functional Class at presentation in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) Despite greater awareness of PAH in recent years and the availability of targeted therapies, the majority of patients are at an advanced symptomatic stage by the time they are diagnosed.3 A French registry of 674 patients has highlighted that 75% of patients were in New York Heart Association (NYHA) Class III or IV at presentation (figure 1).3 Clinical investigations to date have focused largely on these more compromised patient populations. However, some recent studies have included patients in the early symptomatic stages of the disease. This is suppor

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