PAH Video Perspectives

In this video, Aaron B. Waxman, MD, PhD, director of the pulmonary vascular disease program at Brigham and Women's Hospital, discusses:

• recent advancements in the treatment of PAH, including the recently updated definition of PAH that lowered the cutoff for diagnosis from 25 mm Hg to 20 mm Hg, which “has allowed us to start thinking about treating patients with earlier phases of disease,” he said;
• treatments in the pipeline for PAH, including sotatercept (Acceleron Pharma), which he noted is a “novel ligand trap” that showed “very impressive results” in a phase 2 trial;
• patients at an increased risk for developing PAH, including those with connective tissue diseases and those who use methamphetamines;
• the importance of identifying PAH early to prevent progression of disease;
• the need for future research in PAH to focus on new methods of diagnosis and new treatments “targeting the fundamentals of the disease”; and
• why physicians in other specialties need to consider PAH when patients present with unexplained shortness of breath.