Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary
Hypertension (CTEPH)

CTEPH is a form of pulmonary hypertension that occurs when blood clots accumulate in your pulmonary arteries. These are the blood vessels that carry blood from the right side of your heart to your lungs, where it receives oxygen. Over time, the clots can form scar tissue, which narrows or blocks blood flow.

When blood can’t move freely, the blood pressure in your arteries increases and your heart must work harder. This can damage the heart and eventually lead to heart failure. 

Organs throughout the body don’t get the oxygen they need and CTEPHcan become life-threatening. 

The most common symptom of CTEPH is shortness of breath with exertion.

Other signs and symptoms include:

• Chest pressure or pain with exertion
• Coughing up blood (hemoptysis)
• Fatigue, especially during activity
• Lightheadedness or dizziness with exertion
• Pounding heartbeat
• Swelling of the legs

These may occur with many other conditions. So expert evaluation is crucial—especially if you have a history of blood clots.

At Emory, we use several tests to diagnose pulmonary hypertension and CTEPH. These may include:

• Lung and breathing tests
• Imaging
• Exercise stress tests

In some cases, we need to perform a cardiac catheterization. We thread a small tube through a vein to the right side of your heart and your pulmonary artery. This allows us to directly measure blood pressure in the lungs.

We evaluate patients diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension for CTEPH. An accurate diagnosis is vital because CTEPH is the only form of pulmonary treatment for which a single treatment (surgery) may lead to a cure.

Essential to this process is assessing the condition of the right side of the heart, the main predictor of pulmonary hypertension survival. For those who qualify, surgery may even resolve heart failure.