There are solutions for the rare disease - pulmonary hypertension

According to Dr. Yohai Adir from Carmel Hospital who served as chairman of an international conference held in Israel, a unique surgical treatment that may lead to a full recovery of patients with chronic pulmonary embolisms

Discovering new ways of diagnosing and treating children with pulmonary hypertension, in addition to new ways of treating children suffering from heart defects were some of the main topics at the first international conference held in Israel on pulmonary hypertension.

Dr. Yohai Adir, a senior physician in the lung disease unit at the Carmel Medical Center, who serves as chairman and organizer of the international conference, informs that "the purpose of the conference was to raise awareness of this rare disease in order to bring about early diagnosis and optimal treatment for patients." The causes of the disease, the innovative ways of diagnosis and treatment of the disease were discussed at the conference.

"Pulmonary hypertension may be caused by various reasons and its frequency varies in different groups of diseases." Updates Dr. Adir, failure to identify appropriate treatment can cause the patients to die in a short period of between one and three years.

Today it is accepted to divide into several groups the diseases that cause pulmonary hypertension. The first group includes pulmonary hypertension of unknown cause, which is a rare disease in its prevalence, and pulmonary hypertension that accompanies diseases that include connective tissue diseases such as scleroderma, liver diseases, congenital heart defects and even AIDS. This group is important to identify because now unique drugs have been developed to treat pulmonary blood pressure in this group of diseases. The disease has non-specific complaints of shortness of breath on exertion, fatigue, palpitations and sudden loss of consciousness during exertion. Patients with pulmonary hypertension belonging to the first group have a poor prognosis and without treatment most will die within three years. Patients in a more serious condition will survive no more than a year. The treatments available today improve survival and length of life, and the earlier the disease is detected and the patient receives appropriate treatment, the quality of his life and life expectancy will improve," concludes Dr. Adir

About 200 senior doctors from all the hospitals in Israel participated in the unique conference in addition to dozens of leading experts and lecturers from the world from the USA, France, Italy, Switzerland and more who came especially to the international conference held for the first time in Israel at the Daniel Hotel in Herzliya.

The conference was organized under the auspices of the Israeli Association for Pulmonary Medicine and in cooperation with the Association for Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine, Pediatric Cardiology, the Department of Heart Failure, the Israeli Association for Rheumatology and the Israeli Association for Internal Medicine.

Dr. Adir noted with satisfaction that the conference was very successful and preparations are already being made for the continuation of the international conferences on the subject in Israel.