Chronic Heart Failure and Pulmonary Hypertension: Difficulties in Assessment of Prognosis and Potential Solutions

Abstract

Pulmonary  hypertension  and  right  heart dysfunction often  complicate  the course  of chronic  heart failure.  At the same  time,  the addition  of these pathological conditions  significantly increases the frequency  of hospitalizations and worsens survival prognosis. That is why the assessment  of the unfavorable outcome’s risk in the group of such patients is extremely important. This problem draws an interest for a more detailed study, considering the fact that the most convenient,  accessible and minimally invasive prognosis marker has still being searched for nowadays. In this review article, which is based on the analysis of literature over the past 20 years dedicated to the problem of pulmonary hypertension  and chronic heart failure, right ventricular-arterial  coupling, has been considered  as a relatively new parameter  and as an example  of one of these prognostic markers.  This parameter  can be assessed  by echocardiography  examination and  our article describes  several  options  of calculating it, including  one of the most  popular  and valuable ratio of tricuspidal anular plane systolic excursion to the systolic pulmonary artery pressure (TAPSE/sPAP).