Grant: CIHR-ICRH Travel Awards - ICRH / Vascular pool

There are two common types of pulmonary hypertension (PH), pre-capillary PH and PH associated with left heart disease. The current diagnosis approach involves an invasive test called the right heart catheterization (RHC); however, it is challenging to tell the two types of PH apart in older patients who have risk factors for heart problems using RHC at rest. Therefore, we evaluated if adding exercise to RHC can help improve the precision in differentiating PH. By adding exercise to RHC, the test revealed previously undetected cases of pulmonary hypertension at rest and changed the diagnosis type of PH in over half of the patients.