The 2015 ESC/ERS Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary hypertension: a practical chronicle of progress

The first World Health Organization (WHO) Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension was held in 1973 in response to the sudden increase in the number of patients with primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) [1]. This epidemic was related to the intake of appetite-suppressing drugs and only 17 clinicians and scientists convened at the landmark first WHO meeting. Back then, PPH was a mysterious condition without any known therapy. Two decades later, in 1993, the first consensus guideline on PPH endorsed by a specialist society was published [2]. The chairman of the 1993 consensus document, Lewis Rubin (University of California, San Diego, CA, USA), recognised the limited knowledge and science in the field at the time, and remarked some years later that "our task was relatively easy…since the published literature was fairly limited. Accordingly, our guidelines were largely driven by expert opinion" [3]. Since then, we have witnessed dramatic leaps in our knowledge of both the basic and clinical science of pulmonary hypertension. Intravenous epoprostenol, the first of many targeted pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) therapies that are currently available, gained US Food and Drug Administration approval in 1995. The turn of the 21st century saw the emergence of efficacious oral therapies that have altered the care of patients with PAH. For the busy clinician, what is new in the 2015 ESC/ERS guidelines on pulmonary hypertension? <http://ow.ly/QwKUx>