When Incidence Leads to Precedence: A Call for Early Detection Protocols for Pulmonary Hypertension in Heart Failure and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Recent epidemiologic data suggest that heart failure (HF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affect 6.7 million (2.7%) and 14.1 million (4.2%) persons in the United States, respectively, leading to significant morbidity and mortality (1, 2). Pulmonary hypertension (PH), a chronic, progressive disease of the pulmonary vasculature that leads to right HF and death, commonly complicates HF and COPD. Extrapolating from cohort studies, estimates of the prevalence of PH in the setting of HF in the
