Pulmonary hypertension in COPD and lung transplantation: Timing and procedures

The prevalence of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in the general chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) population is undefined because stable COPD patients do not routinely undergo screening echocardiogram and right heart catheterization. Most studies published on this topic are focused on a highly selected group of patients with moderate to severe disease awaiting lung transplantation, since hemodynamic data from cardiac catheterization are part of the standard transplant evaluation. In a very recent article, Hurdman et al. studied the characteristics and outcomes, with a particular focus on mortality, of extensively phenotyped, consecutive patients with PH-COPD over a 9-year period. Th…