There is extremely wide variability in the severity of the pulmonary hypertension among various patients. Evaluating, accurately diagnosing and treating the condition is also very complex. For these reasons, patients with symptoms that suggest pulmonary hypertension require thorough evaluation at a medical center with expertise and experience in pulmonary hypertension. The pulmonary artery is a blood vessel carrying oxygen-poor blood from the right ventricle , one of the pumping chambers of the heart, to the lungs. In the lungs, the blood picks up oxygen and then flows to the left side of the heart, where it's pumped by the left ventricle to the rest of the body through the aorta .
Hypertension is a medical term for an abnormally high blood pressure.
In patients with PPH, the average blood pressure in the pulmonary artery is greater than 25 mm Hg at rest and greater than 30 mm Hg during exercise. This increased resistance, in turn, places a strain on the right ventricle, which now must work harder than usual against the resistance to move enough blood through the lungs. In the United States, an estimated 500 to 1,000 new cases of primary pulmonary hypertension are diagnosed each year. The greatest number is reported in women between the ages of 20 and 40. There may be one or more causes of primary pulmonary hypertension, but all remain unknown.