Pulmonary Hypertension: A Personal Journey
https://doi.org/10.1002/pul2.70047
Abstract
My first clinical experience with Pulmonary Hypertension occurred when, as a resident at Duke University Hospital in the late 1970's, a patient with “primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH)” was admitted with right heart failure. The patient, Mr. C., was a tobacco farmer from rural North Carolina. He was a pleasant man with a grade school education whose family had been farmers for generations, and likely slaves before then. He had no children, and his wife was deeply concerned about his health. Remembering nothing about pulmonary hypertension from medical school, I reached for the standard Textbook of Medicine: The section on Primary Pulmonary Hypertension was quite brief, consisting of two sentences stating that the cause was unknown, there was no treatment, and the afflicted patients died shortly after diagnosis from right heart failure.