Pulmonary Hypertension

One of my friends mother told me she had to go get an echo cardiogram for diagnosing pulmonary hypertension.  From what I remember, pulmonary hypertension is a condition where the artery coming out from the heart towards into the lungs is somehow not letting enough blood flow.  So when that is happening, the heart pumps harder and harder to try to get blood to the lungs.  As a result, the person will have different types of conditions related to difficulty breathing. 

The reasons why your artery would want to narrow has many reasons but the more common ones are by blood clots, COPD, or left heart failure. 

What is pulmonary embolism?  The word pulmonary is lung.  Embolism can either be a blood clot, fat, bacteria, air bubble, or just anything that can potentially build up eventually to clot your artery. 

What is COPD?  COPD stands for chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.  This disease usually means long time smoker who eventually obstructs or blocks their lungs making it harder for them to breathe. 

And what is left heart failure?  left heart failure in relation to Pulmonary Hypertension is when the left atrium (will discuss more about the anatomy of the heart in the next post) is supposed to receive oxygenated blood from the lungs but doesn't.  And so the blood from the lungs gets overflowed and thus it can make it hard for a person to breathe. 

So what are the symptoms?  Difficulty to breathe.  You can get other symptoms like swelling of the legs and arms and etc but these can be misinterpreted as something else being wrong with your body.  So if you do get shortness of breathe, march yourself into the doctors office.  If you do have pulmonary hypertension in which mostly it starts slow and breathing eventually slowly gets worse, go see your doctor ASAP.  The longer you hold it, the harder it would be to correct the situation. 

Diagnosing the condition is mostly done with an echo cardiogram.  But the doctor listening to your heart sounds, blood tests, chest x rays, CT scans, pulmonary function tests, and many more.

As for the treatments, I don't want to go there because I am not licensed to give out medical treatment advice.  But like I said, the earlier you catch the symptoms and going to your doctor, the better chance of living a better and healthier life.

By the way, here are some links to Amazon's book list if you are interested in learning more about Pulmonary Hypertension. 
Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Diagnosis and Evidence-Based Treatment

...and a patient's survival guide
Pulmonary Hypertension: A Patient's Survival Guide

Hopefully you enjoyed my short description of pulmonary hypertension.