Clinical profile and underdiagnosis of pulmonary hypertension in US veteran patients.

Background: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a key contributor to cardiovascular morbidity and early mortality; however, reports are lacking on the epidemiology of PH in at-risk patient populations.

Methods And Results: The echocardiography registries from 2 major Veterans Affairs hospitals were accessed to identify patients with at least moderate PH, defined here as a pulmonary artery systolic pressure ≥60 mm Hg detected echocardiographically. From a total of 10 471 individual patient transthoracic echocardiograms, we identified moderate or severe PH in 340 patients (332 men; mean, 77 years; mean pulmonary artery systolic pressure, 69.