Pharmacotherapy of chronic pulmonary arterial hypertension: value and limitations. Part I: Primary pulmonary hypertension.

Efforts aimed at assessing pharmacotherapy of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PHT) have largely focused on patients with primary PHT, PHT associated with selected connective tissue diseases, and various forms of hypoxic secondary PHT. Part I of this review discusses the value and limitations of a wide variety of vasodilator drugs, oxygen, and warfarin in the treatment of primary PHT with special reference to their effects on pulmonary and systemic hemodynamics, functional capacity, and survival.