Your treatment should be planned by the healthcare centres which are specialised in pulmonary hypertension. Treatment plans can differ according to the aetiology and the severity of the disease. For that reason, not all of the medications used by the patients will be the same.

Type 1: Pulmonary arterial hypertension

Your doctor would prefer pulmonary vasodilators as medications if you’re a patient of this group. It’s targeted to decrease the pressure in the pulmonary vessels with these drugs. Blood would flow much more easily through these vessels thanks to vasodilation. For that reason, the regions of the right heart which pump blood to the pulmonary vessels would relax. This means that your symptoms and suffering because of the disease would lessen.

The drugs which are used as vasodilators for this:

• Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors
• Endothelin receptor antagonists
• Soluble guanylate cyclase stimulators
• Prostaglandins
  Determination of the drug for the treatment is complicated. On this topic, your physician would make the right decision regarding your situation after making the necessary evaluations with you.
  Apart from the special medications for the disease, other treatments will be suggested for the possible complications occurring because of pulmonary hypertension for further support.
  The drugs which can be used for this:
  
  • Diuretics: These drugs decrease the edema-related symptoms by getting rid of the excess fluid from the body.
  • Oxygen therapy: Helps lessen the breath-shortage-like feeling by increasing the oxygen concentration in the blood
  • Anticoagulants: In some types of pulmonary hypertension, there are great risks of blood clot formation. Thanks to these drugs, the formation of the blood clot is prevented.
  • Pulmonary rehabilitation: You’ll be able to deal with your shortage of breath much more easily with the exercise programs created specifically for you.
• Your physician may also come up with the following recommendations:
  • Avoiding pregnancy
  • Not travelling to places having higher altitudes than 1500-2000 meters (In addition, you may need oxygen support during your flight. For that reason, consultancy by your physician may be needed.)
  • Having your influenza and pneumococcus vaccines

Type 2 and 3: Pulmonary hypertension related to left heart diseases or lung diseases

In both of the pulmonary hypertension groups, the problems originate from secondary reasons related to the lungs or heart. For that reason, if you’re a patient belonging to this group, your physician would focus on the situation causing pulmonary hypertension. Your pulmonary hypertension would recover with the treatment of the main reason, if possible.

Tip 4: Pulmonary hypertension related to blood clots (Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, CTEPH)

If your pulmonary hypertension is related to the blood clots in pulmonary vessels, your physician will prescribe your anticoagulants. These drugs would prevent the formation of new blood clots.
Your physician may recommend a “pulmonary endarterectomy” (removal of the clots with surgery) if the blood clots are too hard to be solved inside the blood vessel. With this operation, blood flow will be relieved after the removal of the clots in the pulmonary vessels. In conclusion, pressure in the vessel will decrease.
If it’s not possible to perform “pulmonary endarterectomy”, a procedure called “balloon angioplasty” can be preferred. In this procedure, the narrow region is tried to be widened by enlargement of the tiny balloon in the pulmonary vessels. With the application of the same technique to all of the problematic vessels, blood flow is relieved, and blood pressure in the pulmonary vessels decreases.
If your pulmonary hypertension persists after these operations, your doctor may recommend the treatment option with soluble guanylate cyclase stimulators. It was seen that these drugs were effective for the prevention of your disease’s progress. Your physician may recommend other medications if necessary.

Type 5: Pulmonary hypertension related to other reasons

Since the causes of pulmonary hypertension are very variable, there’s no standard treatment plan. Your physician would recommend you the most suitable treatment.