Patients with severe pulmonary hypertension (PH) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can now be identified using three widely available clinical variables, all of which can be measured non-invasively, a single-center, retrospective analysis indicates.
"All PH is prognostically relevant in COPD, but severe PH is associated with severely decreased survival, and it is frequently associated with a different phenotype of COPD, with less severe airway obstruction but more severe diffusion [capacity] and more severe hypoxemia as well," Gabor Kovacs, MD, associate professor of pulmonology, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria, explained to Medscape Medical News.
"We believe that patients with this specific phenotype might benefit from individualized therapy, but we need to identify them first and we need non-invasive tools to [select out] patients with this phenotype from the large number of COPD patients without it," he added.
The study was published online January 26 in the journal CHEST.
Suspected Pulmonary Hypertension
A total of 142 patients with COPD who had undergone clinically indicated right heart catheterization for suspected PH were included in the analysis. "The diagnosis of COPD and the severity of airflow limitation were established according to the GOLD [Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease] recommendations," Kovacs and colleagues note.
