Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) affects just over 3% of individuals with congenital heart disease (CHD), according to nationwide data from the Netherlands.
This equates to an incidence rate of 100 cases in every million of the general population, reports the research in the International Journal of Cardiology.
The study findings show that of the four clinical classifications of PAH-CHD (Eisenmenger syndrome [group A], PAH with left-to-right shunts [group B], PAH with coincidental CHD [group C] and postoperative PAH [group D]), postoperative PAH was the most common.
“[W]e would like to emphasize that the awareness of PAH in patients after shunt closure should be increased to guarantee optimal treatment and medical care and lifelong cardiac follow-up is recommended in these patients”, say the researchers.
