Congenital Heart Disease & Eisenmenger's Syndrome February 4th-7th is Congenital Heart Disease Awareness week. The incidence of congenital heart disease today is 1:100 live births. With today’s post , I wanted to discuss a complicated problem that adults who are born with congenital heart disease may suffer from for their entire lives: Eisenmenger’s Syndrome. A … [Read more...]
Patients Helping Other Patients
We are lucky to have some patient contributors to our website. I have known Donna and Patricia for many years. They have been very active in the local pulmonary hypertension community. They offer the following insight into the role of support groups. By Patricia Harrington and Donna Green The support of family and friends is a key element of coping with any complex medical … [Read more...]
Congenital Heart Disease: An Overview
What is Congenital Heart Disease? As we are developing from a single egg fertilized by a single sperm, cells divide and begin to develop into the different tissues of our adult bodies. This is a very complex process that is like a kind of perfectly choreographed ballet. A special cluster of cells slowly differentiates into the cardiovascular system. Cells that become the … [Read more...]
What We Learn From Our Patients
I recently lost a friend and patient of almost a decade. Her battle with familial pulmonary hypertension started when she was a young girl and her mother died from the disease. I met her in her early twenties when she already had severe PAH. Her brother had been treated for severe PAH for several years prior. When I first met her, she had a young daughter, the light of … [Read more...]
A wish for 2016
As we look back to 2015 it has been a good year for pulmonary hypertension patients. We have made steps forward. We have an expanding number of medications to treat PAH. Patients are living longer and feeling better. We have taken further steps toward understanding the genes involved in the disease. Despite our progress, we remain ineffective in answering some very basic … [Read more...]
