An Epidemiological Study of Pulmonary Hypertension by Echocardiography in Tertiary Care Institute, Tamilnadu, South India

Abstract

BACKGROUND Pulmonary hypertension is a severe progressive disease ultimately leading to right heart failure and death. There is paucity of data regarding pulmonary hypertension from the developing countries including India. This retrospective descriptive study was carried out at a tertiary care institute with an objective of establishing the epidemiological data of pulmonary hypertension by Echocardiography. MATERIALS AND METHODS All patients who were referred for first time echo between January 2016 and December 2016 were included and analysed in this study. Echocardiogram was performed by consultant cardiologist using Philips HDIIXE and Aloka SSD-4000 machine following ASE guidelines. Pulmonary artery systolic was derived from right ventricular systolic pressure gradient from tricuspid regurgitation jet velocity by modified Bernoulli equation. RESULTS In our study, out of 17,625 cases, 281 (1.59%) patients were diagnosed as pulmonary hypertension with slight preponderance to Female 145 (451.9%) when compared to Male 125 (43.4%). The commonest aetiology was Rheumatic Heart Diseases (37.7%) followed by Coronary Artery Diseases (36.2%) and COPD (11%). Idiopathic pulmonary hypertension is seen in 5.3% of patients. The mean age group in our study was 35 to 45 years. CONCLUSION Pulmonary hypertension is gaining renewed interest in recent times due to its devastating nature and availability of newer effective pulmonary vasodilator drugs. In this study, the commonest aetiology of pulmonary hypertension is treatable rheumatic heart disease and coronary artery disease. So, treatment of pulmonary hypertension with newer drugs and management of aetiological diseases like Rheumatic Heart Disease and Coronary Artery Disease will improve the survival of patients with pulmonary hypertension.