Invited Speaker

Pulmonary Hypertension in Congenital Heart Diseases. Role of Pulmonary Vasodilators Drugs in this Clinical Setting
Laura Dos
Spain


Mainly due to improvements in the management of congenital heart diseases in the paediatric age, the number of adults with congenital heart disease is growing steadily. Pulmonary hypertension is not an uncommon finding in this patient population and the mechanisms by which it develops vary. However, the most usual scenario of pulmonary hypertension in such cohort is intracardiac shunt leading to overflow of the pulmonary vascular bed, the end stage of which is the Eisenmenger syndrome.

The aim of this talk is to review the mechanisms by which endothelial dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension develop in the setting of congenital heart diseases, to summarize the state of the art in terms of medical treatment with the currently available pulmonary vasodilators and to outline the future in this field.