Risk Stratification and Medical Therapy of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Based on global experience collected in the RCTs on PAH patients, the following comments can be proposed:

• In treatment-naive PAH patients, initial monotherapy is able to improve exercise capacity, haemodynamics and outcome compared with untreated patients.

• In treatment-naive and newly diagnosed (incident) PAH patients, initial combination therapy is able to improve symptoms, exercise capacity and outcome compared with initial monotherapy.

• In already treated (prevalent) PAH patients, sequential combination therapy is able to improve exercise capacity, haemodynamics and outcome compared with patients continuing with their background therapy.