Executive Summary Thai Pulmonary Hypertension Guidelines 2020

Abstract

In 2011, the Heart Association of Thailand (HAT) approved the first Thai guideline for the diagnosis and management of patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). Since then, significant changes have occurred in the diagnosis and management of patients with PH, such as risk assessment and new strategies for combination therapies based on the 2015 European Society of Cardiology (ESC)/European Respiratory Society (ERS) pulmonary hypertension guidelines. The most recently updated definition of PH was from the Sixth World Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension in 2018. Hence, HAT has revised the Thai guidelines for the diagnosis and management of patients with PH, which was approved by the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand in 2019. These guidelines are intended for use by 1) general practitioners for preliminary diagnoses and referral to a PH referral center and 2) specialist physicians such as cardiologists and pulmonologists, to collaborate in the caring process and diagnosis and management, including the use of Pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH)-specific drugs. The guidelines were written in Thai language to be easily understood and approved by HAT and the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand in 2019. The current executive summary is aimed to highlight important details of the 2020 Thai Pulmonary Hypertension Guidelines for a broader distribution. This updated version of the executive summary of the guidelines is aimed to achieve three objectives, 1) early diagnosis by using the algorithm, including pathophysiology into one of five PH groups, 2) risk assessment for PAH patients into low, intermediate, or high risk, and 3) sequential combination therapy as indicated by the risk assessment for PAH-specific drugs to maintain PAH patients within the low-risk group as much as possible to improve their long-term survival. Keywords: Guideline, Pulmonary hypertension, Diagnosis, Management