Beirut, 5 May 2017: People in Lebanon suffering from chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) or pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH); both rare forms of Pulmonary Hypertension, a severe, progressive, life-changing and life-threatening condition of the lungs and heart;4,5 now have access to a novel oral treatment that especially benefits those whose disease persists or recurs after surgery.
“This is a much needed offering for patients who have had no proven drug treatment options available to them if their disease is inoperable or if it persists or recurs following surgery,” said Dr. George Dabar, Section Head of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Beirut’s Hotel Dieu de France Hospital, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Saint Joseph University.
“Pulmonary Hypertension is a devastating diagnosis, and the symptoms of breathlessness, dizziness and fainting can be debilitating, so to have a treatment option that achieves meaningful clinical improvements and enables patients to take part in everyday activities that many of us take for granted is a much needed step forward,” continued Dr. Dabar.
Results from a major clinical trial, CHEST-1, showed that the treatment – Riociguat, developed by Bayer and used in the US and Europe for three years now – is the first and only drug to demonstrate statistically significant clinical improvement in patients with inoperable CTEPH or persistent or recurrent CTEPH after surgery.
Riociguat is also indicated for treating patients with PAH, where the prognosis for patients remains poor despite the availability of several approved therapies.3,13,14
Another pivotal trial, PATENT-1, has shown that Riociguat was the first oral treatment to demonstrate early, significant clinical efficacy, taken alone or in combination with other PAH therapies.
The treatment has generally shown statistically significant improvements consistently across a broad range of clinically relevant endpoints, reflecting an increased level of physical activity, delayed disease progression, improvements in heart and lung function and a reduction of the associated symptoms such as breathlessness, resulting in improved quality of life for patients.1
The standard and only potentially curative treatment for CTEPH is a surgical procedure, in which the blood vessels of the lungs are cleared of the blood clot and scar tissue caused by the disease.7,8 However, up to 40% of patients with CTEPH are not operable and the disease persists or recurs after surgery in up to 35% of patients.
About Pulmonary Hypertension
Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) is a severe, progressive, life-changing and life-threatening disorder of the lungs and heart in which the blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries is above normal, and which can lead to heart failure and death.4,5 People with PH develop a markedly decreased exercise capacity and a reduced quality of life. The most common symptoms of PH include shortness of breath, fatigue, dizziness and fainting, all of which are worsened by exertion. As the symptoms of PH are non-specific, diagnosis can be delayed by as much as two years. Early diagnosis and accurate identification of the PH types, of which there are five including chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), are essential as a delay in treatment initiation of even a few months can have a negative impact on survival.