PPH NEWS is an education-based resource site that provides information on the health issues surrounding Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH), including what it is, the symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment options.
This website also provides resource to learn more about your legal rights and remedies if you or someone you know has developed PPH due to the use of diet drugs such as Fen Phen.

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PPH News

PPH Patient Keeps Fighting

September 7, 2004

When an Ohio boy was diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), his family was frightened. PPH is a progressive disease resulting in the narrowing of the blood vessels in the lungs that causes high blood pressure and eventually leads to heart failure. With no known cause, PPH has been tied to the use of recalled diet drugs like fen phen.

When being diagnosed with PPH the prognosis is normally not too good. The addition of new drugs and treatment methods have been improving the life expectancy of PPH patients, though in 2000 alone the American Lung Association reported 3,065 deaths were attributed to PPH. Estimates ranging from 500 to 1,000 new cases of the rare and usually fatal disease are diagnosed every year.

PPH diagnoses usually get considered after other illnesses are ruled out. The Ohio boy was diagnosed a month after birth after becoming critically ill and laboring for each breath. A pediatric cardiologist at the Children's Hospital in Columbus diagnosed the boy, saying the only other two PPH diagnoses he had made did not have good outcomes.

At this time, Glaxo-Wellcome's new drug Flolan had been approved (Flolan was approved in 1995) and was pumped into the boy for 24-hours a day. Over the next couple weeks the boy's condition improved. For six years he continued to receive Flolan treatments, and now at seven years old, the boy is doing well. Though no longer taking Flolan, the aid of eight other prescription drugs has helped his lungs blood pressure to down to less than twice the norm.

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