What is Primary Pulmonary Hypertension? Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH) is a rare and most the time fatal disease. It is caused by the Pulmonary artery having a built up pressure from the narrowing of the pulmonary arteries. This causes the blood in your arteries to not be able to circulate properly therefore not supplying oxygen where it is needed. This causes the right ventricle of your heart to become extremely enlarged and over worked (2). This also causes a patient to not be able to run, exercise, or enjoys most outside activities. Heart failure is the most common and frightening ending to this disease. The survival rate of this disease is 68% chance after the first year and 35% chance after 5 years of living with PPH (1). There are ways to slow down the process of going into heart failure by some types of medications, pill form and liquid medications given through a CADD-Legacy pump (3). .
With there being no cure to PPH there are medicines to slow down the process. The most common one is Viagra. As anyone can assume it is only used as a male stimulant but it is actually used to increase the blood flow so the heart doesn't have to overwork itself. Another medicine though, that is used through a CADD-Legacy pump, is a medicine called Flolan. Flolan, also known as epoprostenol, is an IV medicine used to increase the blood flow in your body and helps you to be able to exercise. Flolan has to be mixed and change every 24 hours and has to be kept cold with ice packs while in use and the replacement medicine is to be kept in the fridge. Remodulin IV, which is the other major medicine used to treat PPH, is used to widen the arterial canals to where the blood flows freely. Unlike Flolan, Remodulin only has to be replaced every 2 days and does not need to be refrigerated. At least one of these two medicines are needed to live with PPH. Both are put in through an IV that is attached to a port that a patient has in their side.