A new drug may open up the doors to liver transplantation to patients who once would have been turned down because they had portopulmonary hypertension.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have successfully treated severe portopulmonary hypertension in a 47-year-old woman with epoprostenol, a pulmonary vasodilator that received FDA approval in September 1995. The woman subsequently underwent a successful liver transplantation.
Although liver transplantation traditionally has not been an option for patients with portopulmonary hypertension, one of the researchers, Paul C. Kuo, MD, told TNN Transplant News Network: "As a result of this new drug, epoprostenol, we can convert a lot of these people from noncandidates to candidates." Chronic epoprostenol "may be the answer to a heretofore untreatable disease," he said.
A prospective trial of the use of chronic epoprostenol as a bridge to liver transplantation with moderate to severe portopulmonary hypertension is underway at the University of Maryland.
Earlier this year, the investigators published their results using continuous intravenous infusion of epoprostenol for the preoperative stabilization and reversal of portopulmonary hypertension in four patients, but those patients did not undergo subsequent transplantation (Transplantation 1997;63:604-606). Epoprostenol, marketed as Flolan, is manufactured by Glaxo Wellcome, Inc.
For Your Information:
Paul C. Kuo, MD
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410-328-5408 (phone); 410-328-3837 (fax)
PKUO@surgery1.ab.umd.eduGlaxo Wellcome, Inc.
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