Article Text

Download PDFPDF

Correspondence
Intrapulmonary shunting associated with sildenafil treatment in a patient with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension
Free
  1. Pablo F Castro1,
  2. Douglas Greig1,
  3. Hugo E Verdejo1,
  4. Iván Godoy1,
  5. Samuel Córdova1,
  6. Marcela P Ferrada1,
  7. Robert C Bourge2
  1. 1Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, Coronary Care Unit, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile
  2. 2Division of Cardiovascular Disease, Department of Medicine, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
  1. Correspondence to Pablo F Castro, Department of Cardiovascular Diseases, Coronary Care Unit, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Marcoleta 367, 7 floor, Santiago de Chile, Chile; pcastro{at}med.puc.cl

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

We reported a case of a 30-year-old Hispanic patient with a history of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). A baseline catheterisation showed a mean pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) of 58 mm Hg, capillary wedge pressure of 14 mm Hg, cardiac index of 2.7 l/min/m2 and pulmonary vascular resistance of 7.5 WU, with no response to adenosine. A pulmonary CT scan ruled out thromboembolism or significant abnormalities (such as glass opacities, septal lines or mediastinal node enlargement commonly seen in venocclusive disease1); albumin macroaggregate lung perfusion scan showed normal perfusion without significant intrapulmonary shunt (IPS). He was started on diuretics, oxygen and sildenafil 25 mg three times a day. Despite treatment, dyspnoea worsened and 2 months later the patient was referred …

View Full Text