A recently issued update to the 2004 American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Guidelines recommends the use of sildenafil in treating patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), reporting a substantial benefit.
The drug, most commonly known as Viagra, is widely used to treat erectile dysfunction.
The recommendation is based on several reports of studies of patients with PAH who were successfully treated with long-term sildenafil therapy. In one case, 222 patients completing 1-year of treatment with sildenafil monotherapy improved their 6-minute walk test by 51m.
This update appears in the June issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.