THE CURRENT TREATMENTS OF PULMONARY ARTERIAL HYPERTENSION

Abstract

Pulmonary hypertension is a debilitating chronic disease. In the last 20 years, there has been im- pressive progress in thetreatment strategy of pulmonary arterial hypertension. This led to a significant increase in the awareness and improvement in theclinical outcome, though there was no substantial improvement in the rate of mortality. This review summarizes the current state of theart of the treat- ment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, including the three main categories of pulmonary hypertension specificmedication which were introduced in the last 20 years. Mainly drugs that restore prostaglandins function of the endothelial cells, drugsthat restore Cyclic GMP in the endothelial cells and various forms of medication that inhibit Endothelin receptors. The currentstrategy to treat patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension is to initiate drug therapy as early as possible and to adoptcombinational therapy using two or more classes of drugs simultaneously. There are current efforts to introduce future medica- tionthat can be more specific to a phenotype of pulmonary hypertension.