Comprehensive Diagnostic and Long-Term Treatment for Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension
Part of Cincinnati Children's Heart Institute, the Pulmonary Hypertension Clinic provides comprehensive diagnostic and long-term treatment and follow-up for patients with pulmonary hypertension. In addition, our clinic has has particular interest in infants with congenital diaphragmatic hernias (CDH) with resulting pulmonary hypertension. We provide both inpatient and outpatient consultation and follow-up care.
About Pulmonary Hypertension
Pulmonary hypertension results from increased resistance of blood flow through the pulmonary vasculature (due to progressive muscular thickening and fibrosis of the blood vessels in the lungs). Pulmonary hypertension is a chronic and progressive disease that often requires long term care with our team.
Commonly mistaken for asthma, this disease forces the heart’s right ventricle to work harder, causing it to enlarge, thicken and experience an elevation in pressure. In the early stages, the changes in the blood vessels may be reversible, but do become permanent later. If this pressure is not relieved, right ventricular failure, arrhythmias and even death may result.
Read more about Pulmonary Hypertension in the Heart Encyclopedia.
Our Expertise
The Pulmonary Hypertension Program provides comprehensive diagnostic and long-term treatment and follow-up for patients with pulmonary hypertension. Our comprehensive multi-disciplinary team comprises dedicated physicians, nursing staff, pharmacists, dietitians, social workers and genetic counselors. We work closely with other programs at Cincinnati Children’s in an integrated manner to bring the best care possible to our patients whose disease process may be complicated by pulmonary hypertension. These include newborn medicine, pulmonary, liver service and Hemangioma / Vascular Malformation teams, among others.
The Pulmonary Hypertension Program also works alongside The Heart Institute Research Core (HIRC) to participate in pediatric specific pulmonary hypertension cutting edge research. HIRC is a full-service, academic, clinical and translational research organization within the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC). HIRC enables and accelerates Clinical and translational science by facilitating the design, implementation, dissemination, and application of innovative cardiovascular research studies.
Pulmonary Hypertension Comprehensive Care Center
We are proud to be one of eight pediatric centers in the nation to earn accreditation from the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) as a Pulmonary Hypertension Accredited Comprehensive Care Center.
PHA established the Pulmonary Hypertension Care Center (PHCC) Program to identify centers with expertise in pulmonary hypertension that have demonstrated an ability to properly diagnose the disease and have the capability to manage these complex patients. The PHA PHCC Accreditation Program is a critical landmark, as patients now have a means to find high-quality pulmonary hypertension programs throughout the U.S.
As a PHCC, we participate in the PHA Registry (PHAR), a multi-center, prospective, observational registry of newly evaluated patients diagnosed at accredited U.S. centers with either pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) or chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).
