Primary pulmonary hypertension and cirrhosis: are they related?
The relationship of primary pulmonary hypertension to longstanding portal hypertension secondary to hepatic cirrhosis was examined. An unselected series of 17,901 autopsied patients older than 1 yr of age showed that primary pulmonary hypertension occurred with a prevalence of 0.13% in all patients, but with a prevalence of 0.73% among patients with cirrhosis (p less than 0.001). A clinical series of 2,459 patients with biopsy-proved hepatic cirrhosis showed a prevalence of primary pulmonary hypertension of 0.61%, also significant (p less than 0.001) when compared with the prevalence among all patients older than 1 yr of age at autopsy. These data appear to exclude a coincidental association of cirrhosis with the development of the vascular lesions of primary pulmonary hypertension.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001344:Autopsy; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006975:Hypertension, Portal / Q000150:complications; D006976:Hypertension, Pulmonary / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D007223:Infant; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged