Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is one of the most common congenital heart defects. Large, uncorrected VSDs can lead to significant left-to-right shunting, resulting in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and progressive pulmonary vascular disease. Early surgical intervention is recommended but is not always possible due to various socioeconomic and health infrastructure-related issues, especially in countries like India.

Pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH) is a fatal disease associated with high mortality, especially in countries with limited health resources in terms of lack of access to diagnostic and therapeutic evaluations. Therefore, it is necessary to discover inexpensive and available serum biomarkers for examining patients.

The right ventricle (RV), because of its anatomic location and contractile pattern, has remained an elusive target for accurate characterization by echocardiography in both healthy children and various disease states. As such, cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging remains the gold standard for myocardial assessment and RV function.

Pulmonary arterial endothelial and smooth muscle cell homeostasis is regulated through the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) receptor pathways. Pathway imbalance results in pulmonary hypertension (PH). Each pathway has ligands and modulators influencing this balance. How these pathways differ in pediatric PH patients is unknown.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a rare, complex disease affecting both children and adults. Efforts to provide health education are imperative as health literacy impacts patient and caregiver capacity to acquire, process, and understand health information and make informed health decisions. 

The authors of this manuscript titled “Elective thoracic surgical resections for pulmonary arteriovenous malformations—a 16 year single-center experience,” presents excellent surgical results for elective operations performed in 24 patients with pulmonary parenchymal arteriovenous malformations. 

Cellular communication network 2 (CCN2) is a secreted matricellular protein associated with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) but has not been studied relative to PAH severity, outcomes, or right ventricle (RV) structure and function in a large human cohort and preclinical animal model.

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a disease that can eventually progress to right ventricular failure. Heart rate variability (HRV), including standard deviation of R-to-R intervals (SDNN), has been associated with increased mortality across different populations. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between HRV and disease severity in PAH.

In this Community Call, we discussed:

• Positioning Imatinib for pulmonary arterial hypertension: A dose finding phase 2 study
• Mitochondria as a primary determinant of angiogenic modality in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Congenital heart disease (CHD) occurs at increased prevalence at high altitude, but there may be a paradoxical later onset of the development of Eisenmenger syndrome. We hypothesized that congenital heart disease patients at high altitude are protected from an early onset of irreversible pulmonary hypertension.