Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary hypertension is high blood pressure in your lungs' arteries. Arteries are big blood vessels that carry blood from your heart to parts of your body. Your lungs' arteries are called the pulmonary arteries.

Pulmonary hypertension is an uncommon disorder. It's different from hypertension, which is high blood pressure in the arteries to the rest of the body. Hypertension is much more common than pulmonary hypertension.

• In pulmonary hypertension, your heart has to work harder to pump blood through your lungs

• Pulmonary hypertension is usually caused by certain lung or heart problems and sometimes by certain medications

• Pulmonary hypertension makes you feel weak and short of breath

• To tell if you have pulmonary hypertension, doctors will do a chest x-ray and ultrasound of your heart

• Doctors treat the cause of your pulmonary hypertension and may give you medicine to open up your pulmonary arteries

Pulmonary hypertension is often caused by:

• Heart failure on the left side of your heart

• Disorders that cause low oxygen levels in your blood, such as severe COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or sleep apnea

• Blood clots in your lungs (pulmonary embolism)

Sometimes doctors don't know what causes a person's pulmonary hypertension.

The main symptoms of pulmonary hypertension are:

• Feeling weak and short of breath during mild activity

You may have mild chest discomfort and leg swelling.

Doctors suspect pulmonary hypertension based on your symptoms, especially if you have a lung problem or heart failure. To tell for sure, they’ll do:

• Chest x-ray

• Echocardiography—an ultrasound of your heart

If it looks like your pulmonary hypertension is severe, doctors may do:

• Cardiac catheterization—doctors insert a thin, hollow tube (catheter) through a vein or artery into your heart to measure the blood pressure in your heart and pulmonary arteries

Doctors will treat the cause of your pulmonary hypertension and have you avoid things that can make it worse. For example, they will have you stop smoking and not travel to high-altitude areas, such as up in the mountains.

They may give you medicine such as:

• Extra oxygen through prongs in your nose or a mask on your face

• Medicine to open your pulmonary arteries

• Water pills (diuretics)

• Anticoagulants (blood thinners) to prevent blood clots in your lungs

If you have severe pulmonary hypertension, doctors may do a lung transplant (a surgery where doctors remove all or part of a lung from someone else’s body and put it into your body).