Medical Issues



Treatments for Pulmonary Hypertension

Up until 1990, there were very few treatments available for pulmonary arterial hypertension and the projected survival rate was two to four years. Since that time, a number of treatments have become available that are able to slow progression of the disease and even reverse some of the damage to lungs and heart. Still newer treatments are in the research phase or in clinical trial stages. Before a treatment can be prescribed, it is important for the treating physician to determine the underlying cause for the increased pressures a patient has and, if possible, determine the cause of PAH. If an underlying disease or condition can be found, treatment of this disease or condition should be part of your overall PAH care.

Currently Approved Therapies for the Treatment of PAH in the U.S.:
Therapy which may be used in conjunction with treatments for Pulmonary Hypertension::

Under FDA Review

Recent items from the PHCentral Newsroom:
  • Breakthrough For Fatal Lung Disease -- In-Depth Doctor's Interview
    (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Michael Kutryk, M.D., explains how using a patient's own cells could potentially repair damage done from pulmonary hypertension. 
      
  • Artery Stiffness Tied To Mortality In Pulmonary Hypertension
    (Medscape) -- In the December issue of Chest, Dr. Vonk-Noordegraaf and colleagues at VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam note that they studied 86 patients to investigate whether a measure of proximal pulmonary artery stiffness -- area distensibility and relative cross-sectional area change (RAC) via MRI -- might be of use in predicting mortality.
     
  • PAH: Improving Outcomes Through Early Intervention
    (Medscape) -- Over the past 10 years, 6 new medications were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) World Health Organization (WHO) Group I. These medications lead to improvement in functional class, quality of life, hemodynamics, and survival. Most were approved for patients only in certain "functional classes" based on which patients were included in the pivotal trials. For treatment studies conducted in the late 1990s/early 2000s, this meant inclusion of almost exclusively WHO functional class III/IV patients. More recent studies have included some patients with functional class I/II symptoms, and evidence that early treatment of these groups may be beneficial is growing.
     
  • Existing Drugs Show Promise For Treating End-stage Renal Disease In Lupus
    (Science Daily) -- Studies in mice suggest that two drugs already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration show promise for treating the complications of lupus, according to Nilamadham Mishra, M.D., in presentations this week at the American College of Rheumatology in Boston.