Toru Satoh

TL;DR: Early diagnosis of PAH remains difficult, and screening programs in asymptomatic patients are feasible only in high-risk populations, particularly in patients with systemic sclerosis, for whom recent data suggest that a combination of clinical assessment and pulmonary function testing has a higher predictive value than echocardiography alone.

TL;DR: It is suggested that the six-minute walk test, a submaximal exercise test, reflects exercise capacity determined by maximal cardiopulmonary exercise testing in patients with PPH, and it is the distance walked in 6 min that has a strong, independent association with mortality.

TL;DR: In this paper, the prognostic significance of plasma brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) level increases in proportion to the degree of right ventricular dysfunction in pulmonary hypertension.

TL;DR: A high level of plasma BNP, and in particular, a further increase in plasma B NP during follow-up, may have a strong, independent association with increased mortality rates in patients with PPH.

TL;DR: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) describes a subpopulation of patients with PH characterized hemodynamically by the presence of pre-capillary PH including an end-expiratory pulmonary artery wedge pressure (PAWP) 15 mm Hg and a pulmonary vascular resistance > 3 Wood units as discussed by the authors.