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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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What Is Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension And How It Relates To Viagra? Most of us are familiar with hypertension (high blood pressure) that imposes stress on the left heart chambers. But there is another type of hypertension that involves only the right heart chambers called pulmonary arterial hypertension or in short PAH. It is one form of pulmonary hypertension, which is an increase of blood pressure in the pulmonary artery pulmonary vein, or pulmonary capillaries, together known as the lung vasculature. PAH is a severe disease that can worsen over time and is life-threatening. Usually found in people with severe lung disease, often related to smoking, it can also be caused by or occur at the same time as a variety of other medical conditions. Result of taking certain medicines can cause PAH, too or it might exist without any underlying disease. Pulmonary arteries carry blood returning from the body to the lungs, where the blood receives a fresh supply of oxygen. In PAH, blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries raises when the small arteries of the lung become abnormally narrow. This could be due to contraction of the muscles within the walls of the arteries making harder for the blood to flow through them, or thickening of the walls of the arteries because too much cell growth in the lining of the vessels, or formation of tiny blood clots within the smaller arteries blocking the flow of blood.
In any case, the heart is forced to work faster and blood pressure within the lungs rises. The high blood pressure puts a strain on the heart. Over time, the heart muscle weakens and can no longer pump blood efficiently. Patients with PAH can feel symptoms including shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain, dizziness and fainting. Patients might delay seeing their doctors for years because symptoms might develop very gradually. There is no cure for PAH though several medications are available to treat the symptoms. Approximately 50 percent of people diagnosed with PAH will die within 5 years. The average survival is only about 3 years for people who have PAH and are not treated. Even with treatment, the condition of people with PAH will continue to worsen and make everyday tasks more difficult. Lifestyle changes, digoxin, diuretics, oral anticoagulants, and oxygen therapy are considered conventional therapy for PAH, but these have never been proven to be beneficial in a randomized, prospective manner. Nevertheless, studies have shown that using erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs for those with PAH might have an improvement in exercise tolerance and a reduction of pressure in the right heart chambers. Some research has also suggested that these drugs might also have a beneficial effect of reducing the chance of the progression of PAH. ED drugs available currently include sildenafil citrate (also known as Viagra), tadalafil (Cialis) and vardenafil (Levitra). What they do is to inhibit the enzyme c-GMP-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5), which breaks down a chemical called c-GMP. The blocking of PDE-5 enzyme will cause c-GMP to accumulate. This will increase the size of the blood vessels and lower resistance to blood flow, thus reducing the pressure at the right heart. PDE-5 can be found mainly in the walls of the arteries in the lungs and penis, so the effect of ED drugs are primarily for these 2 areas. But one should be cautioned that using ED drugs might have many side effects including headaches, flushing and nasal congestion. Users of Viagra may complain of a tinge of blue in their vision, and some may even have serious adverse effects like visual impairment and sudden hearing loss, though such cases might be rare. While PAH is more common in women overall, it does affect people of all ages and all ethnic and racial backgrounds. PAH is also found in people with a family history of pulmonary hypertension or sudden death. Anyway, PAH is a relatively rare disease, affecting 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 1 million people.
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