DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I am a 43-year-old woman and the mother of two young children. I have just been told I have pulmonary hypertension. According to my doctors, this has nothing to do with high blood pressure, which I do not have. This confuses me. I am slightly short of breath when I have to climb stairs from our basement to the second floor, but aside from that I feel OK. What is this thing? — P.G.

A: Pulmonary hypertension is high blood pressure in the lungs’ blood vessels. It doesn’t have anything to do with body pressure. The lungs are delicate structures, and they can’t tolerate the pressure needed in the body’s circulation to propel blood to all tissues and organs. Lung blood pressure is only one-fifth the pressure of body blood pressure.

Emphysema and chronic bronchitis can raise lung blood pressure. At your age, you’re not likely to have either. Scleroderma, an illness that turns the skin hard, is another cause. Heart-valve problems can bring it on. Sometimes, it runs in families. Quite often, no cause is found and then it is called idiopathic (a word whose meaning is “no known cause”) pulmonary arterial hypertension.

The fact that you are young makes the outlook for you more favorable. You don’t have pronounced symptoms, another favorable factor. With advanced pulmonary hypertension, people become breathless during slight activity. They have no energy to perform the usual, daily tasks. Frequently, they have chest pain when they’re doing anything requiring exertion. Sometimes, the ankles and feet swell, and affected people are prone to fainting.

If your lung blood pressure has risen because of some other illness, treatment is directed to that illness. For idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, there are medicines now available that were not available a decade ago. One is epoprostenol, administered intravenously through a small portable pump. Sildenafil — the medicine originally marketed for erectile dysfunction — is another treatment. For resistant pulmonary hypertension, lung transplant is an option.

c. North America Syndicate